Note (return) — Chapter IX

The key to all the Pythagorean dogmas, then, seems to be the general formula of unity in multiplicity:--unity either evolving itself into multiplicity, or unity discovered as pervading multiplicity. The principle of all things, the same principle which in this philosophy, as in others, was customarily called Deity, is the primitive unit from which all proceeds in the accordant relations of the universal scheme. Into the sensible world of multitude, the all-pervading Unity has infused his own ineffable nature; he has impressed his own image upon that world which is to represent him in the sphere of sense and man. What, then, is that which is at once single and multiple, identical and diversified--which we perceive as the combination of a thousand elements, yet as the expression of a single spirit--which is a chaos to the sense, a cosmos to the reason? What is it but harmony--proportion--the one governing the many, the many lost in the one? The world is therefore a harmony in innumerable degrees, from the most complicated to the most simple: it is now a Triad, combining the Monad and the Duad, and partaking of the nature of both; now a Tetrad, the form of perfection; now a Decad, which, in combining the four former, involves, in its mystic nature, all the possible accordances of the universe. 442