Note 137 — CONCERNING PROVIDENCE.

He who understands this divine sentence, that all things sympathise with all, will see that the magic cultivated by the ancient philosophers, is founded in a theory no less sublime than rational and true. Such a one will contemplate the universe as one great animal, all whose parts are in union and consent with each other; so that nothing is foreign and detached; nothing strictly speaking void of sympathy and life. For through various parts of the world, when considered as separated from the whole, are destitute of peculiar life; yet they possess some degree of animation however inconsiderable, when considered with relation to the universe. Life indeed may be compared to a perpetual and universal sound; and the soul of the world resembles a lyre, or some other musical instrument, from which we way suppose this sound to be emitted. But from the unbounded diffusion as it were of the mundane soul, every thing participates of this harmonical sound, in greater or less perfection, according to the dignity of its nature. So that while life every where resounds, the most abject of beings may be said to retain a faint echo of the melody produced from the mundane lyre. It was doubtless from profoundly considering this sympathy between the mundane soul, and the parts of the world, that the ancient philosophers were enabled to procure the presence of divinity, and perform effects, beyond the comprehension of the vulgar. And that this was the opinion of Plotinus, the following passage evinces: “It appears to me that the ancient wise men, who wished to procure the presence of the gods, by fabricating statues and performing sacred rites, directed their intellectual eye to the nature of the universe, and perceived that the nature of soul was every where easy to be attracted, when a proper subject was at hand, easily passive to its influence. But every thing adapted to imitation, is readily passive; and is like a mirror able to seize a certain form, and reflect it to the view.” Ennead iv. lib. 3.