Categoria: Tratado 28 (IV,4)

40. But magic spells; how can their efficacy be explained? By the reigning sympathy and by the fact in Nature that there is an agreement of like forces and an opposition of unlike, and by the diversity of those multitudinous powers which converge in the one living universe. There is much drawing and spell-binding dependent…

23. A first principle is that the knowing of sensible objects is an act of the soul, or of the living conjoint, becoming aware of the quality of certain corporeal entities, and appropriating the ideas present in them. This apprehension must belong either to the soul isolated, self-acting, or to soul in conjunction with some…

24. The next question is whether perception is concerned only with need. The soul, isolated, has no sense-perception; sensations go with the body; sensation itself therefore must occur by means of the body to which the sensations are due; it must be something brought about by association with the body. Thus either sensation occurs in…

25. But the organ is not the only requisite to vision or to perception of any kind: there must be a state of the soul inclining it towards the sphere of sense. Now it is the soul’s character to be ever in the Intellectual sphere, and even though it were apt to sense-perception, this could…

26. Their knowledge of our prayers is due to what we may call an enlinking, a determined relation of things fitted into a system; so, too, the fulfillment of the petitions; in the art of magic all looks to this enlinkment: prayer and its answer, magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enchained…

27. If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things – or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them – at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of…

28. Thus much established, we may return on our path: we have to discuss the seat of the passionate element in the human being. Pleasures and pains – the conditions, that is, not the perception of them – and the nascent stage of desire, we assigned to the body as a determined thing, the body…

45. From this discussion it becomes perfectly clear that the individual member of the All contributes to that All in the degree of its kind and condition; thus it acts and is acted upon. In any particular animal each of the limbs and organs, in the measure of its kind and purpose, aids the entire…

44. Contemplation alone stands untouched by magic; no man self-gathered falls to a spell; for he is one, and that unity is all he perceives, so that his reason is not beguiled but holds the due course, fashioning its own career and accomplishing its task. In the other way of life, it is not the…

43. And the Proficient (the Sage), how does he stand with regard to magic and philtre-spells? In the soul he is immune from magic; his reasoning part cannot be touched by it, he cannot be perverted. But there is in him the unreasoning element which comes from the (material) All, and in this he can…

42. It follows that, for the purposes which have induced this discussion, the stars have no need of memory or of any sense of petitions addressed to them; they give no such voluntary attention to prayers as some have thought: it is sufficient that, in virtue simply of the nature of parts and of parts…

41. The prayer is answered by the mere fact that part and other part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also. Often, too, the sounding of one string awakens what might pass for a perception in another, the result of their being in…

22. And as regards vegetal forms? Are we to imagine beneath the leading principle (the “Nature” phase) some sort of corporeal echo of it, something that would be tendency or desire in us and is growth in them? Or are we to think that, while the earth (which nourishes them) contains the principle of desire…

39. We cannot, then, refer all that exists to Reason-Principles inherent in the seed of things (Spermatic Reasons); 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,…

38. Whatever springs automatically from the All out of that distinctive life of its own, and, in addition to that self-moving activity, whatever is due to some specific agency – for example, to prayers, simple or taking the form of magic incantations – this entire range of production is to be referred, not to each…

37. We must not rob the universe of any factor in its being. If any of our theorists of to-day seek to explain the action of fire – or of any other such form, thought of as an agent – they will find themselves in difficulties unless they recognize the act to be the object’s…

36. The Universe is immensely varied, the container of all the Reason-Principles and of infinite and diverse efficacies. In man, we are told, the eye has its power, and the bones have their varied powers, and so with each separate part of hand and of foot; and there is no member or organ without its…

35. But we must give some explanation of these powers. The matter requires a more definite handling. How can there be a difference of power between one triangular configuration and another? How can there be the exercise of power from man to man; under what law, and within what limits? The difficulty is that we…

34. For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part…

33. The Circuit does not go by chance but under the Reason-Principle of the living whole; therefore there must be a harmony between cause and caused; there must be some order ranging things to each other’s purpose, or in due relation to each other: every several configuration within the Circuit must be accompanied by a…