(23) In the above we have but one of the many applications of the Principle of Correspondence, which teaches that "As above, so below; as below, so above;" and that "From One know All." II. The Principle of Law and Order The Principle of Law and Order manifests in the presence and manifestation of a regular sequence, and orderly procession of phenomena in the universe of things. It is voiced by the celebrated axiom of a leading scientist that "The Universe is governed by laws." The spirit of this principle of truth is embodied in the very term "The Cosmos," which term is derived from the Greek term "Kosmos," meaning: "The world or universe considered in connection with perfect order and arrangement, as opposed to Chaos." In the occult teachings of the Rosicrucians it is impressed upon the student that "there is no such thing as Chance," in so far as Chance is used in the sense of "uncaused happening." The student is taught that even in the instances in which Blind Chance seems to rule, there is still the manifestation of Law and Order and Causation, though the Causes may lie outside of human knowledge. The term "Chance" is now employed by careful thinkers only in the sense of "The unknown, or unforeseen cause or causes of an event." In the Cosmos the same Causes, manifesting under the same circumstances always produce the same Effects. All of our science and thought is based upon this universal fact, and intelligent reasoning would be impossible without the tacit assumption of the truth of this principle. There is no room for Chance or haphazard, lawless happenings in the Cosmos. Everything, every happening, and every event, must have its "causes" and its "becauses." Everything happens "because" of so-and-so. Given certain causes, there must ensue certain results and effects. "Nothing ever happens" says the old proverb—and nothing ever does "happen" except for definite causes, and in pursuance with universal laws. As someone has said: "There is no room in the universe for anything outside of and independent of Law and Order. The existence of such an outside Something would render all Cosmic Law ineffective, and would plunge the universe into chaotic disorder and lawlessness." A writer has said regarding this: "A careful examination will show that what we call 'Chance' is merely the idea of obscure causes, causes that we cannot understand. The word 'Chance' is derived from a word meaning "to fall" (as the falling of dice from the box onto the board), the essence of the idea being that the fall of the dice are merely 'happenings' unrelated to any cause. And this is the sense in which the term is generally employed. But when the matter is closely examined it is seen that there is no chance whatsoever about the fall of the dice. Each time a die falls, and displays a certain number, it obeys a law as infallible as that which governs the revolution of the planets around the sun, and the movement of the sun itself. Back of the fall of the die are causes, or chains of causes, running back further than the mind can follow. The position of the die in the box; the amount of muscular energy expended in the throw; the condition of the table; etc., etc., all are causes, the effect of the combination of which may be seen in the fall and position of rest of the die. But back of these perceived causes there are chains of unseen preceding causes, all of which have had a bearing upon the position of the die as it comes to rest on the table. If the die be cast a great number of times, it will be. found that the numbers shown will be about equal, that is, there will be an equal number of one-spot, two-spots, etc., coming uppermost. Toss a penny in the air, and it may come down either heads' or tails.' But make a sufficient number of tosses, and the heads and tails will even up. This is the operation of the Law of Average. But bath the average and the single toss come under the Law of Cause and Effect." The same writer says: "There is no original happening; and every happening is merely a link in a great chain of happenings. There is a continuity between precedent happenings, the present happenings, and future happenings. There is always the relation between what has gone before, and what is happening now, and what will happen in the future. For instance: A stone is dislodged from the mountain-side and crashes through the roof of a cottage in the valley below. At first sight this seems to be a chance effect, but when we examine the matter we find a great chain of causes behind it. In the first place, there was the rain which softened the earth supporting the stone and which allowed or caused' it to fall. Then back of that there was the influence of the sun, other rains, etc., which gradually disintegrated the rock from a larger piece. Then there were the causes which led to the formation of the mountain, and its upheaval by convulsions of nature, and so on ad infinitum. We might follow up the causes behind the rain. Then we might consider the existence of the cottage just at that place at that particular moment. In short we would soon find ourselves involved in a mesh of cause and effect from which we would soon strive vainly to extricate ourselves." But the Rosicrucians do not believe in Fatalism in the ordinary sense of that term. Fatalism denies that preceding events have any causal relation to preceding events, and holds that the fated event would have happened in spite of any precedent event. Fatalism makes the fated event stand apart from the Law of Cause and Effect, and implies that the event arose from the operation of some arbitrary degree or will. The following quotation from an authoritative source will serve to point out the essential distinction between Fatalism and the Determination of Cosmic Law: "Fatalism is the doctrine that the course of events is so determined that what an individual wills can have no effect on that course. Fatalism must be carefully distinguished from Determinism, as the confusion of these two conceptions has been responsible for much of the popular prejudice existing against Determinism. Fatalism, as has been said, denies that Will has efficacy in shaping events. Determinism maintains that this causally efficient Will is itself to be causally accounted for; this is entirely different for the fatalistic assertion that Will counts for nothing. In fact Determinism and Fatalism are fundamental antagonistic. Determinism asserts that events are determined by some of the events that immediately precede them; that if the latter were different the former would be different. Fatalism denies that immediately preceding events have anything to do with the origination of events immediately following: it asserts that the latter would occur even if the former were changed. To say that one's death is fixed by Fate is to deny that it takes place by natural law. Or, more accurately, it is to say that however much one varies the cause, one cannot vary the effect. The fatalist's position is that the end is predetermined, but not the means; the determinist's position is that the events now occurring lead by causality to other events, which are thus fixed because their causes are actually existent. Or, to put it still another way, for the fatalist what actually determines the event is not another event immediately preceding, but some mysterious decree issued by some mysterious agent ages before the event. This enables us to see that Fatalism gives no scope to the Will. But Determinism, which merely asserts that every event has its determining conditions in its immediate antecedents, includes among those antecedents the human Will. Thus Determinism is consistent with a belief in the efficacy of Will, and Fatalism is not." In the above we have illustrations of some of the many applications of the Principle of Law and Order, which teaches that "Nothing happens by Chance, but everything happening is in accordance with Law, Order, and Causation." III. The Principle of Vibration The Principle of Vibration manifests in the manifestation of a state of vibration in everything in the Manifested Cosmos. It is voiced by the old occult axiom: "Everything vibrates." Modern science has advanced to the position of the ancient occultists who asserted that everything in the Cosmos was in a state or condition of continuous vibration. Science now tells us that not only is every particle of matter, or every mass of matter, in a state of continual vibration, but also that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and every other form of natural force results from a state of vibration.

(7) It remains to notice the theory of the one Causing-Principle alleged to interweave everything with everything else, to make things into a chain, to determine the nature and condition of each phenomenon- a Principle which, acting through seminal Reason-Forms- Logoi Spermatikoi- elaborates all that exists and happens.

The doctrine is close to that which makes the Soul of the Universe the source and cause of all condition and of all movement whether without or- supposing that we are allowed as individuals some little power towards personal act- within ourselves.

But it is the theory of the most rigid and universal Necessity: all the causative forces enter into the system, and so every several phenomenon rises necessarily; where nothing escapes Destiny, nothing has power to check or to change. Such forces beating upon us, as it were, from one general cause leave us no resource but to go where they drive. All our ideas will be determined by a chain of previous causes; our doings will be determined by those ideas; personal action becomes a mere word. That we are the agents does not save our freedom when our action is prescribed by those causes; we have precisely what belongs to everything that lives, to infants guided by blind impulses, to lunatics; all these act; why, even fire acts; there is act in everything that follows the plan of its being, servilely.

No one that sees the implications of this theory can hesitate: unable to halt at such a determinant principle, we seek for other explanations of our action.

(2) But to halt at these nearest determinants, not to be willing to penetrate deeper, indicates a sluggish mind, a dullness to all that calls us towards the primal and transcendent causes.

How comes it that the same surface causes produce different results? There is moonshine, and one man steals and the other does not: under the influence of exactly similar surroundings one man falls sick and the other keeps well; an identical set of operations makes one rich and leaves another poor. The differences amongst us in manners, in characters, in success, force us to go still further back.

Men therefore have never been able to rest at the surface causes.

One school postulates material principles, such as atoms; from the movement, from the collisions and combinations of these, it derives the existence and the mode of being of all particular phenomena, supposing that all depends upon how these atoms are agglomerated, how they act, how they are affected; our own impulses and states, even, are supposed to be determined by these principles.

Such teaching, then, obtrudes this compulsion, an atomic Anagke, even upon Real Being. Substitute, for the atoms, any other material entities as principles and the cause of all things, and at once Real Being becomes servile to the determination set up by them.

Others rise to the first-principle of all that exists and from it derive all they tell of a cause penetrating all things, not merely moving all but making each and everything; but they pose this as a fate and a supremely dominating cause; not merely all else that comes into being, but even our own thinking and thoughts would spring from its movement, just as the several members of an animal move not at their own choice but at the dictation of the leading principle which animal life presupposes.

Yet another school fastens on the universal Circuit as embracing all things and producing all by its motion and by the positions and mutual aspect of the planets and fixed stars in whose power of foretelling they find warrant for the belief that this Circuit is the universal determinant.

Finally, there are those that dwell on the interconnection of the causative forces and on their linked descent- every later phenomenon following upon an earlier, one always leading back to others by which it arose and without which it could not be, and the latest always subservient to what went before them- but this is obviously to bring in fate by another path. This school may be fairly distinguished into two branches; a section which makes all depend upon some one principle and a section which ignores such a unity.

Of this last opinion we will have something to say, but for the moment we will deal with the former, taking the others in their turn.

(10) The upholder of Happening must be asked how this false happening can be supposed to have come about, taking it that it did, and haw the happening, then, is not universally prevalent. If there is to be a natural scheme at all, it must be admitted that this happening does not and cannot exist: for if we attribute to chance the Principle which is to eliminate chance from all the rest, how can there ever be anything independent of chance? And this Nature does take away the chanced from the rest, bringing in form and limit and shape. In the case of things thus conformed to reason the cause cannot be identified with chance but must lie in that very reason; chance must be kept for what occurs apart from choice and sequence and is purely concurrent. When we come to the source of all reason, order and limit, how can we attribute the reality there to chance? Chance is no doubt master of many things but is not master of Intellectual-Principle, of reason, of order, so as to bring them into being. How could chance, recognised as the very opposite of reason, be its Author? And if it does not produce Intellectual-Principle, then certainly not that which precedes and surpasses that Principle. Chance, besides, has no means of producing, has no being at all, and, assuredly, none in the Eternal.

Since there is nothing before Him who is the First, we must call a halt; there is nothing to say; we may enquire into the origin of his sequents but not of Himself who has no origin.

But perhaps, never having come to be but being as He is, He is still not master of his own essence: not master of his essence but being as He is, not self-originating but acting out of his nature as He finds it, must He not be of necessity what He is, inhibited from being otherwise?

No: What He is, He is not because He could not be otherwise but because so is best. Not everything has power to move towards the better though nothing is prevented by any external from moving towards the worse. But that the Supreme has not so moved is its own doing: there has been no inhibition; it has not moved simply because it is That which does not move; in this stability the inability to degenerate is not powerlessness; here permanence is very Act, a self-determination. This absence of declination comports the fulness of power; it is not the yielding of a being held and controlled but the Act of one who is necessity, law, to all.

Does this indicate a Necessity which has brought itself into existence? No: there has been no coming into being in any degree; This is that by which being is brought to all the rest, its sequents. Above all origins, This can owe being neither to an extern nor to itself.

(10) And what will such a Principle essentially be?

The potentiality of the Universe: the potentiality whose non-existence would mean the non-existence of all the Universe and even of the Intellectual-Principle which is the primal Life and all Life.

This Principle on the thither side of Life is the cause of Life- for that Manifestation of Life which is the Universe of things is not the First Activity; it is itself poured forth, so to speak, like water from a spring.

Imagine a spring that has no source outside itself; it gives itself to all the rivers, yet is never exhausted by what they take, but remains always integrally as it was; the tides that proceed from it are at one within it before they run their several ways, yet all, in some sense, know beforehand down what channels they will pour their streams.

Or: think of the Life coursing throughout some mighty tree while yet it is the stationary Principle of the whole, in no sense scattered over all that extent but, as it were, vested in the root: it is the giver of the entire and manifold life of the tree, but remains unmoved itself, not manifold but the Principle of that manifold life.

And this surprises no one: though it is in fact astonishing how all that varied vitality springs from the unvarying, and how that very manifoldness could not be unless before the multiplicity there were something all singleness; for, the Principle is not broken into parts to make the total; on the contrary, such partition would destroy both; nothing would come into being if its cause, thus broken up, changed character.

Thus we are always brought back to The One.

Every particular thing has a One of its own to which it may be traced; the All has its One, its Prior but not yet the Absolute One; through this we reach that Absolute One, where all such reference comes to an end.

Now when we reach a One- the stationary Principle- in the tree, in the animal, in Soul, in the All- we have in every case the most powerful, the precious element: when we come to the One in the Authentically Existent Beings- their Principle and source and potentiality- shall we lose confidence and suspect it of being-nothing?

Certainly this Absolute is none of the things of which it is the source- its nature is that nothing can be affirmed of it- not existence, not essence, not life- since it is That which transcends all these. But possess yourself of it by the very elimination of Being and you hold a marvel. Thrusting forward to This, attaining, and resting in its content, seek to grasp it more and more- understanding it by that intuitive thrust alone, but knowing its greatness by the Beings that follow upon it and exist by its power.

Another approach:

The Intellectual-Principle is a Seeing, and a Seeing which itself sees; therefore it is a potentiality which has become effective.

This implies the distinction of Matter and Form in it- as there must be in all actual seeing- the Matter in this case being the Intelligibles which the Intellectual-Principle contains and sees. All actual seeing implies duality; before the seeing takes place there is the pure unity . That unity acquires duality , and the duality is a unity.

Now as our sight requires the world of sense for its satisfaction and realization, so the vision in the Intellectual-Principle demands, for its completion, The Good.

It cannot be, itself, The Good, since then it would not need to see or to perform any other Act; for The Good is the centre of all else, and it is by means of The Good that every thing has Act, while the Good is in need of nothing and therefore possesses nothing beyond itself.

Once you have uttered "The Good," add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency.

Do not even say that it has Intellection; you would be dividing it; it would become a duality, Intellect and the Good. The Good has no need of the Intellectual-Principle which, on the contrary, needs it, and, attaining it, is shaped into Goodness and becomes perfect by it: the Form thus received, sprung from the Good, brings it to likeness with the Good.

Thus the traces of the Good discerned upon it must be taken as indication of the nature of that Archetype: we form a conception of its Authentic Being from its image playing upon the Intellectual-Principle. This image of itself, it has communicated to the Intellect that contemplates it: thus all the striving is on the side of the Intellect, which is the eternal striver and eternally the attainer. The Being beyond neither strives, since it feels no lack, nor attains, since it has no striving. And this marks it off from the Intellectual-Principle, to which characteristically belongs the striving, the concentrated strain towards its Form.

Yet: The Intellectual-Principle; beautiful; the most beautiful of all; lying lapped in pure light and in clear radiance; circumscribing the Nature of the Authentic Existents; the original of which this beautiful world is a shadow and an image; tranquil in the fullness of glory since in it there is nothing devoid of intellect, nothing dark or out of rule; a living thing in a life of blessedness: this, too, must overwhelm with awe any that has seen it, and penetrated it, to become a unit of its Being.

But: As one that looks up to the heavens and sees the splendour of the stars thinks of the Maker and searches, so whoever has contemplated the Intellectual Universe and known it and wondered for it must search after its Maker too. What Being has raised so noble a fabric? And where? And how? Who has begotten such a child, this Intellectual-Principle, this lovely abundance so abundantly endowed?

The Source of all this cannot be an Intellect; nor can it be an abundant power: it must have been before Intellect and abundance were; these are later and things of lack; abundance had to be made abundant and Intellection needed to know.

These are very near to the un-needing, to that which has no need of Knowing, they have abundance and intellection authentically, as being the first to possess. But, there is that before them which neither needs nor possesses anything, since, needing or possessing anything else, it would not be what it is- the Good.

(3) If this principle is the Authentic Existent and holds unchanging identity, does not go forth from itself, is untouched by any process of becoming or, as we have said, by any situation in place, then it must be always self-gathered, never in separation, not partly here and partly there, not giving forth from itself: any such instability would set it in thing after thing or at least in something other than itself: then it would no longer be self-gathered; nor would it be immune, for anything within which it were lodged would affect it; immune, it is not in anything. If, then, not standing away from itself, not distributed by part, not taking the slightest change, it is to be in many things while remaining a self-concentrated entire, there is some way in which it has multipresence; it is at once self-enclosed and not so: the only way is to recognise that while this principle itself is not lodged in anything, all other things participate in it- all that are apt and in the measure of their aptitude.

Thus, we either cancel all that we have affirmed and the principles laid down, and deny the existence of any such Nature, or, that being impossible, we return to our first position:

The One, numerically identical, undistributed, an unbroken entire, yet stands remote from nothing that exists by its side; but it does not, for that, need to pour itself forth: there is no necessity either that certain portions of it enter into things or again that, while it remains self-abiding, something produced and projected from it enter at various points into that other order. Either would imply something of it remaining there while the emanant is elsewhere: thus separated from what has gone forth, it would experience local division. And would those emanants be, each in itself, whole or part? If part, the One has lost its nature, that of an entire, as we have already indicated; if whole, then either the whole is broken up to coincide point for point with that in which it is become present or we are admitting that an unbroken identity can be omnipresent.

This is a reasoning, surely, founded on the thing itself and its essential nature, not introducing anything foreign, anything belonging to the Other Order.

(4) Another theory:

The Universe is permeated by one Soul, Cause of all things and events; every separate phenomenon as a member of a whole moves in its place with the general movement; all the various causes spring into action from one source: therefore, it is argued, the entire descending claim of causes and all their interaction must follow inevitably and so constitute a universal determination. A plant rises from a root, and we are asked on that account to reason that not only the interconnection linking the root to all the members and every member to every other but the entire activity and experience of the plant, as well, must be one organized overruling, a "destiny" of the plant.

But such an extremity of determination, a destiny so all-pervasive, does away with the very destiny that is affirmed: it shatters the sequence and co-operation of causes.

It would be unreasonable to attribute to destiny the movement of our limbs dictated by the mind and will: this is no case of something outside bestowing motion while another thing accepts it and is thus set into action; the mind itself is the prime mover.

Similarly in the case of the universal system; if all that performs act and is subject to experience constitutes one substance, if one thing does not really produce another thing under causes leading back continuously one to another, then it is not a truth that all happens by causes, there is nothing but a rigid unity. We are no "We": nothing is our act; our thought is not ours; our decisions are the reasoning of something outside ourselves; we are no more agents than our feet are kickers when we use them to kick with.

No; each several thing must be a separate thing; there must be acts and thoughts that are our own; the good and evil done by each human being must be his own; and it is quite certain that we must not lay any vileness to the charge of the All.

(52) And the third Principle retains its Light wholly for itself, which (as soon as the Light of Life springs up) presses into the Tincture of the Soul, to the Element, and reaches after the Element; but it attains no more than to the Light of the Sun, which is proceeded out of the Quinta Essentia, out of the Element. And thus the Stars and Elements rule in their Light and Virtue, which is the Sun's, and qualify with the Soul, and bring many Distempers, and also Diseases into the Essences, from whence come Stitches, Agues, Swellings and [other] Sicknesses, [as] the Plague, &c. into those [Essences,] and at last their Corruption and Death.

(28) So truly does advanced modern scientific thought recognize the nature of vibrations, that the axiom is announced that "The difference in things consists entirely of difference in vibrations." This axiom is akin to the ancient occult aphorism that "Things manifest differences according to their rate of vibrations." So, it is seen, all human investigation tends to prove the truth of the old occult axiom that "Everything vibrates." IV. The Principle of Rhythm The Principle of Rhythm manifests that universal regular swing or time-beat which is apparent in all the manifested world, from its highest to its lowest manifestation. The ancient occult axiom "Everything beats time" expresses this fundamental fact of the Cosmos.

(13) The relation of the cause sine qua non is held by the brass in reference to the production of the statue; and likewise it is a [true] cause. For everything without which the effect is incapable of being produced, is of necessity a cause; but a cause not absolutely. For the cause sine qua non is not Synectic, but Co-operative. And everything that acts produces the effect, in conjunction with the aptitude of that which is acted on. For the cause disposes. But each thing is affected according to its natural constitution; the aptitude being causative, and occupying the place of causes sine qua non. Accordingly, the cause is inefficacious without the aptitude; and is not a cause, but a co-efficient. For all causation is conceived in action. Now the earth could not make itself, so that it could not be the cause of itself. And it were ridiculous to say that the fire was not the cause of the burning, but the logs, - or the sword of the cutting, but the flesh, - or the strength of the antagonist the cause of the athlete being vanquished, but his own weakness.

(55) And it is here very exactly seen how the third Principle unites itself with the first, and how they have one [only] Will, for they proceed from one another; and if the second Principle was not in the Midst [between them] then they were but one [and the same] Thing. But speaking here of the Tincture in the Life, we will therefore show in the Light of Nature the true Ground of all the three Births.

(8) What can this other cause be; one standing above those treated of; one that leaves nothing causeless, that preserves sequence and order in the Universe and yet allows ourselves some reality and leaves room for prediction and augury?

Soul: we must place at the crest of the world of beings, this other Principle, not merely the Soul of the Universe but, included in it, the Soul of the individual: this, no mean Principle, is needed to be the bond of union in the total of things, not, itself, a thing sprung like things from life-seeds, but a first-hand Cause, bodiless and therefore supreme over itself, free, beyond the reach of kosmic Cause: for, brought into body, it would not be unrestrictedly sovereign; it would hold rank in a series.

Now the environment into which this independent principle enters, when it comes to this midpoint, will be largely led by secondary causes : there will therefore be a compromise; the action of the Soul will be in part guided by this environment while in other matters it will be sovereign, leading the way where it will. The nobler Soul will have the greater power; the poorer Soul, the lesser. A soul which defers to the bodily temperament cannot escape desire and rage and is abject in poverty, overbearing in wealth, arbitrary in power. The soul of nobler nature holds good against its surroundings; it is more apt to change them than to be changed, so that often it improves the environment and, where it must make concession, at least keeps its innocence.

(25) The fourth cause of disease was what the Orientals called Karma, that is, the Law of Compensation, which demanded that the individual pay in full for the indiscretions and delinquencies of the past. A physician had to be very careful how he interfered with the workings of this law, lest he thwart the plan of Eternal justice. The fifth cause was the motion and aspects of the heavenly bodies. The stars did not compel the sickness but rather impelled it. The Hermetists taught that a strong and wise man ruled his stars, but that a negative, weak person was ruled by them. These five causes of disease are all superphysical in nature. They must be estimated by inductive and deductive reasoning and a careful consideration of the life and temperament of the patient.

(15) And thus you are to know, that the second Principle has it [in its Power,] and there only is Wisdom and Understanding; also therein now is the Omnipotence. And this third Principle is the second's proper own, not separate, but one Essence in it, [and with it,] all over, and yet there is a Birth between them, as may be seen, by the hrich Man and Lazarus, the one being in Paradise, and the other in the most original Matrix, or Hell.

(41) Whenever we see a phenomenal quality, property or characteristic, a state or a condition, we are fully justified in assuming the existence of an opposite to it, which opposite thing will be found to act in the opposite and contrasted direction to it. This is an infallible and invariable rule of phenomenal existence.

(1) We may, however, beginning from another hypothesis, demonstrate the same thing. We must admit that the corporeal parts of the universe are neither sluggish nor destitute of power, but as much as they excel our concerns in perfection, beauty, and magnitude, by so much also is the power which is present with them greater. Each, likewise, by itself is capable of effecting different things, and produces certain different energies. They are also capable of effecting things much more numerous on each other. And besides this, a certain multiform production extends to parts from wholes; partly from sympathy, through similitude of powers, and partly from the aptitude of the agent to the patient. If, therefore, certain evils and destructions happen to parts, they are salutary and good as with reference to wholes and the harmony of the universe, but to parts they introduce a necessary corruption, either from not being able to bear the energies of wholes, or from a certain other commixture and temperament of their own imbecility, or, in the third place, from the privation of symmetry in the parts to each other.

(95) "The third Principle of this world is generated and created out of the first, that is, magically: As is clearly demonstrated in our second [Three Principles], and in our third book [Threefold Life], unto which this book is only an introduction, and is the first book, which was not sufficiently apprehended by the author at the first time, though it appeared clearly enough, yet all of it could not be conceived; also it was as when a torrent or stormy shower of rain passeth over a place, from whence vegetation and springing existeth; for therein is the seed of the whole Deity."]

(39) We cannot, then, refer all that exists to Reason-Principles inherent in the seed of things ; the universe is to be traced further back, to the more primal forces, to the principles by which that seed itself takes shape. Such spermatic principles cannot be the containers of things which arise independently of them, such as what enters from Matter into membership of the All, or what is due to the mere interaction of existences.

No: the Reason-Principle of the universe would be better envisaged as a wisdom uttering order and law to a state, in full knowledge of what the citizens will do and why, and in perfect adaptation of law to custom; thus the code is made to thread its way in and out through all their conditions and actions with the honour or infamy earned by their conduct; and all coalesces by a kind of automatism.

The signification which exists is not a first intention; it arises incidentally by the fact that in a given collocation the members will tell something of each other: all is unity sprung of unity and therefore one thing is known by way of another other, a cause in the light of the caused, the sequent as rising from its precedent, the compound from the constituents which must make themselves known in the linked total.

If all this is sound, at once our doubts fall and we need no longer ask whether the transmission of any evil is due to the gods.

For, in sum: Firstly, intentions are not to be considered as the operative causes; necessities inherent in the nature of things account for all that comes from the other realm; it is a matter of the inevitable relation of parts, and, besides, all is the sequence to the living existence of a unity. Secondly, there is the large contribution made by the individual. Thirdly, each several communication, good in itself, takes another quality in the resultant combination. Fourthly, the life in the kosmos does not look to the individual but to the whole. Finally, there is Matter, the underlie, which being given one thing receives it as something else, and is unable to make the best of what it takes.

(6) In this Consideration you may find what I understand by a Principle. For a Principle is nothing else but a new Birth, a new Life: Besides, there is no more than one Principle wherein there is an eternal Life, that is, the eternal Deity. And that would not have been manifested, if God had created no Creatures in himself, (viz. Angels and Men,) who understand the eternal and indissoluble Band, and how the Birth of the eternal Light is in God.

(3) It rises and it sets, by turns, throughout its limbs ; so that by reason of Time’s changes it often rises with the very limbs with which it [once] had set. For [its] sphericity,—its law of revolution, —is of this nature, that all things are so straitly joined to their own selves, that no one knoweth what is the beginning of their revolution ; since they appear for ever all to go before and follow after their own selves. Good and bad issues, [therefore,] are commingled in all cosmic things.