 Pantheisticon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Alessandro Galliardi. Pantheisticon, or the form of celebrating the Socratic society, divided into three parts, which contain one, the morals and axioms of the pantheists or the brotherhood. Two, their deity and philosophy. Three, their liberty and a law, neither deceiving nor to be deceived. To which is prefixed, a discourse upon the ancient and modern societies of the learned, as also upon the infinite and eternal universe, and subjoined a short dissertation upon a twofold philosophy of the pantheists that is to be followed, together with an idea of the best and most accomplished man, written originally in Latin by the ingenious Mr. John Tallend, and now, for the first time, faithfully rendered into English. Janus Unius Eoghanasius, to the learned and ingenious reader, as one who has the interest of mankind greatly at heart, and as a strict votary of the eternal truth, I present to you, Candid Reader, a new fellowship and a new regulation, by the embracing of which you shall not only become better and wiser, but even live a life of joy, a life of happiness and contentment. By what chance or care these things have been now brought to light, it neither is my business to tell you nor does it concern you to know. For to form a competent judgment of them, our sole view must be directed towards themselves. We must even consult nothing but themselves, as no extrinsic estimation, much less authority, can enhance their value. The generality of mankind is averse from knowledge and bends in victims against its partisans, but as Seneca nobly instructs us, to use our utmost efforts, that catalyke, we might not follow the herd of those that go before, going not where we should go, but where they go, and in a few lines after. Since every man chooses rather to believe than judge, life than is never brought to a scrutiny, credulity has always be ascendant, error handed down from father to son, embarrasses our thoughts in its mazes, we give headlong into it. In a word, it is the dull infatuation of being led by the examples of others that exposes us to ruin. What therefore remains to be done? We shall be in safety, says he, if we separate ourselves from the multitude, where the multitude, as the same author inculcates a little after, is a proof of what is worst, and nothing is so vulgar in the opinion of Tully as to have no relish for knowledge. Philosophy, to make still use of Tully's words, contents itself with a few judges. It designedly shuns the multitude, as conscious of its jealousy and hatred, so that should one undertake to vilify and cast an odium upon philosophy in general, he may do it with the approbation of the people. Or should he strive to attack the philosophy that we adhere to, he may find great resources in the systems of other philosophers. For your part reader, if you choose to follow reason, rather than custom for your guide, you shall repute all human casualties to be placed in a degree far beneath you. You shall patiently take up with your lot, whatever it is, you shall keep at a distance from you foolish ambition, gnawing envy, you shall despise perishable honors, being to perish yourself in a short time. You shall lead a peaceable and pleasant life, neither admiring nor dreading anything. You shall deservedly apply yourself to these verses of Virgil. Felix qui putuit rerum cognosser causas, atque metus omnis et inexorabile fathum, sobgesit pedibus strepitumque acerontis avari, lest the man who could have things the secret causes trace, and cast all fears and fates unmoved decree, and roaring aceron beneath his feet. Be such by reading this pantheisticon, and when you know that it is a philosophical and not a theological description that's here given of the society, for there's a wide difference between unfolding nature's mysteries and discoursing on religion. I shall bid you be wise and farewell. Recorded by Alessandro Gagliardi, Brooklyn, New York, June 14, 2009. Section 1 of Pantheisticon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Pantheisticon by John Toland. Section 1. Of the ancient and modern societies of the learned, as also a dissertation upon the infinite and eternal universe. One. Man, as a sociable animal, can neither live well nor happy nor at any rate without the help and concurrence of others. Therefore several societies, nay innumerable, necessarily arose from the very nature of the thing. Husbands enter into a strict alliance with wives, parents with children, masters with servants, magistrates with subjects, and finally, from the coming together of all those men with their respective families, the union of living in cities is formed. Some of these societies are more, others less voluntary. The former, of which we speak here, were called by the ancient Greeks and Romans brotherhoods, friendships, fellowships, societies. The latter, too, affect very often the same appellation, but we are not to treat here of the corporations of merchants and artisans, nor of religious communities and political assemblies. Such were the arvel brethren, Titian companions, Augustals, Flavials, and Antoniniani. What we speak of are those societies that were frequently instituted among the Greeks and Romans, either for the pleasure or instruction of the mind. Religious assemblies, especially if held in the night time, and all others, either running upon politics or interesting themselves in any shape with regard to the commonwealth, were often restrained and prohibited by the laws, as also those solemn regalios, many of which were celebrated on stated days of the year, to say nothing of the companies of artificers that are vastly different from ours. This misfortune or disgrace seldom or ever befell learned fraternities, friendly and facetious banquets, which were called by the Greeks Symposia and Cyndipna, by the Latins, Compotationes, and Conkinationes, not unlike the Susitia of the Spartans. Each member of the society contributed something towards the supper that was to be in common. This contribution was called by the Greeks Symbolum or Symbola, by the Romans to use Cicero's term Collector, from whence the entertainment itself was called Kena Collatitia. Those who contributed nothing were a Symboli, i.e. Scott Free. The Symbolum, moreover, was called by the Greeks Aeronium, the Supper Aeronos, the Guests Aeronisti, and the Master of the Feast Aeronarca. Two. But as nothing in nature is more beautiful than disposition and order, so in all such banquets the brethren, who for the most part should not be more in number than the Muses, nor fewer than the Graces, or rather the exact number of the Planets, choose among themselves, by casting the dice, a President, who might point out for them the order of drinking and argument. This President was also characterised with several other titles, as the Manager of the Club, the Chief, the Empire, the King, the Captain General, the Father of the Supper, the Lord of the Banquet, the Master of the Revels, according to Cicero, and, according to Varro, the Steward of the Feast, for which reason Jupiter Goodfellow was worshipped under that name as the most equitable mediator and arbitrator of the laws of social life. Whoever is willing to know the qualities that are requisite for a good President must consult at leisure the fourth question of the first book of Plutarch's Symposia, for they regard rather the laws of drinking than argument. Now, as these banquets were seasonable or unseasonable, more or less delicate and sumptuous, those which homogenes call socratic entertainments easily bore the sway over all others and were justly more commendable. We have a specimen of them in the writings of the two most excellent disciples of the Divine Socrates, Tawit, Plato, and Xenophon. Three. Our age likewise has produced not a few who at table desire us to dispute freely and with less restraint upon any topic whatsoever, instituted entertainments not unlike those of the Socratics, and even called them not improperly Socratic societies. Most of these are philosophers, or at least in a degree bordering upon philosophers, bigoted to no one's opinion, nor led aside by education or custom, nor subservient to the religion and laws of their country, they freely and impartially in the silence of all prejudices and with the greatest sedateness of mind discuss and bring to a scrutiny all things, as well sacred as the saying is, as profane. They are called for the most part pantheists, upon account of an opinion concerning God and the universe peculiar to themselves. But diametrically opposite to the Epicureans, Chaologists, and Oniropolists, as they acknowledge no first confusion, no fortune, much less chance to be the maker of the world. Notwithstanding they deliver their sentiments concerning the cause and origin of things in conjunction with Linus, the most ancient, most authentic and revered oracle of mysterious science, saying, all things are from the whole and the whole is from all things. This short sentence which they always have in their mouth requires to be fully explained, wherefore we shall hear briefly clear it up by adjusting exactly words to things. They assert that the universe of which this world we behold with our eyes is but a small portion, is infinite, both in extension and virtue, but one in the continuation of the whole and contiguity of the parts. Immovable according to the whole, as beyond it there's no place or space, but movable according to the parts, or by distances in number infinite. In corruptible and necessary both ways to wit eternal in existence and duration, intelligent also by an eminent reason, and not to receive its denomination from our intellectual faculty and less by a slight similitude. Finally, whose integrant parts are always the same and constituent parts always in motion. I could not express these things in so concise a manner with greater perspecurity, yet for the further satisfaction of the reader I shall animadvert upon them one after another. Four. From that motion and intellect that constitute the force and harmony of the infinite whole innumerable species of things arise, every individual of which is both a matter and form to itself, form being nothing else than a disposition of parts in each body. From quents therefore we may conclude that the best reason and most perfect order regulate all things in the universe, in which there are infinite worlds distinguished from one another as other parts by their peculiar attributes, although with regard to the whole there are no parts really separate. Things moving by parts in no wise take away from the perfection of the universe as thereby new perfections are produced by a never ceasing principle of generation. Neither is the constant dissolution of many things that result from those parts and hindrance to its perfection, in as much as this is a point of the greatest perfection. For nothing of the whole perishes, but destruction and production succeed each other by terms, and all, by a perpetual change of forms and a certain most beautiful variety and vicissitude of things, operate necessarily towards the participation good and preservation of the whole, and make, as it were, an everlasting circulation. That celebrated darling of the muses was of opinion that from one all things are made and shall be reunited to the same. Finally the force and energy of the whole, the creator and ruler of all, and always tending to the best end, is God, whom you may call the mind, if you please, and soul of the universe. And hence it is that the Socratic brethren, by a peculiar term as I said before, are called pantheists. This force, according to them, being not separated from the universe itself but by a distinction of reason alone. Gregory of Ariminum, Ocamus, Cayetanus, Thomas Aquinas even, who was canonized to pass by others, thought not that they contradicted the mosaic formation of the world, neither do I, when they taught that God was the eternal cause of the eternal world, and that all things from all eternity flowed from God without a medium. But Jerome thinks finally upon the matter where he says that God is infused and circumfused both within and without the world. And this is the sentiment of the ancient philosophers, especially of the Pythagorex. Five. To set still in a clearer light the manner of the pantheists philosophizing, I say that the first bodies or the elements, if I am allowed the expression of the elements, are most simple and actually indivisible, infinite to in number and species, and that all things are made out of their composition, separation, and various mixture, but with proper measures, weights, and motions. To wit, with a mutual and mechanic proportion and disproportion of parts in their nature movable, and with a mutual determination of concurring and impelling bodies, which without any void are divided into their own elements. There is no intermission of determinations, in as much as there is no space void, nor a last barrier. For the commonly received axiom in schools vis there's no such thing as a progress of motion in infant item, is both sophisticated and false, as there are infinite individuals, and as neither a first nor a last can be fixed upon, and though we willingly grant that there is no infinite determination or any particular species of motion, yet at the same time we make no allowance for a first corporeal movable or an immovable center of the universe, or even a center of the universe in any sense whatsoever. As to the devices of Epicurus, who asserted that these things were cemented and concreted together by rough and smooth, and hooked and crooked bodies, not forgetting the interposition of his void, we shall lead them to himself, with his fortuitous concourse of atoms, and declination of the same not extrinsically determined, acting perhaps something in his distances between diver's worlds, that we should not dwell long upon the eternal descent of atoms to align, and such like paralogisms, when in an infinite space neither the highest nor the lowest nor the middle nor the last can be conceived. Internal and universal action, the chiefest of all motions, is circumscribed by no limits, the universe itself being unlimited, wherefore there will be no absurdity in establishing an infinite action. But all particular motions mutually terminate, restrain, retard, or accelerate themselves according to the manner and strength of every resistance or impulse. Our design does not permit us to dispute here, either upon the mutual action of the globes against themselves, or upon arguments in defence of a void, which have been advanced by philosophers of no small repute. Whoever feeds his fancy with these notions, let him consult the great Newton. Incompounded bodies are contained, as we said, particles of every species that cannot be cut or parted. This or that species having the ascendant, for the more there is in a thing of the substance of another, according to the old maxim, the more it will derive from it its appellation. So that it comes to pass that there's no real innovation in the world except the sole permutation of place, from whence proceed the production and destruction of all things, to wit by generation, increase, alteration, and such like motions. For all things, as we already remarked, are in motion, and all diversities whatsoever are so many names for particular motions, not one single point in nature being absolutely at rest, but only with regard to other things, rest itself being truly and essentially a motion of resistance. Motion of the brain, the proper organ of this faculty, or rather a certain part of the brain continued in the spinal marrow and in the nerves with their membranes, constitutes the principal seed of the soul and performs the motion both of thought and sensation, which vary wonderfully according to the different structure of the brain in all kinds of animals. As to other movements of the body, performed by the means of the nerves, we undertake not here to speak of them. The ethereal fire environing all things, and therefore supreme, permeating all things, and therefore intimate, of which a kitchen fire is a certain analogical and imperfect similitude. The ether, I say, by a wonderful structure of the brain thereon too adjusted, and by exterior objects that act on the brain through the means of the nerves of the senses, and excite therein various imaginations, duly executes all the machinery of conception, imagination, remembrance, amplification, and diminution of ideas. It is this fire alone, more fleet than thought itself, and by far more subtle than any other kind of matter, which can with so quick a motion run over the tended cords and ligaments of the nerves, and variously agitate them according to the different impressions of objects of the nerves. What is more, the ether is a reviving fire, infusing a sweet and gentle warmth, not burning, not dissipating, not consuming as ordinary fire. It rules all things, says the author of the treatise upon diet. It disposes of all things according to nature, without noise, and imperceptible, either to recite or touch. In it is soul, mind, prudence, increase, motion, diminution, alteration, sleep, watching. It governs all in all things, and never suffers celestial and terrestrial beings to be at rest. This fire is horse's particle of divine breath, and Virgil's inwardly nourishing spirit, heavenly origin, fiery vigour, and if there be any other name which he uses to express it, the animal spirits of the moderns and their liquidity of nerves are but empty titles unless they denote this fire. Now by what means imaginations are excited, or ideas formed in the brain, which organ, as it is corporeal and very complex, it can produce nothing but what is corporeal. We may to appear in our second book of esoterics, where we demonstrate that all ideas whatsoever are corporeal, wherefore rejecting the notions of some who figure to themselves the diaphragm to be the seed of the soul, or the heart, or liver, or other parts. It behoves men to know, says Hippocrates, or rather Democrates, in that valuable treatise upon the falling sickness, that no other part but the brain affords us pleasures as mirth, laughter, diversion, and, on the other hand, grief, anxiety, sadness, and mourning. But it means we become wise and understand, and see, and hear, and know what's base and honest, good and bad, agreeable and disagreeable, discerning some of them by rule and perceiving others by the advantage that is next to them. By the same, in their proper times, we distinguish pleasures from what are not so, and the same things please us not always. By the same we grow delirious and run mad, we nurse terrors and fears, some haunting us by night, others by day. Our thoughts are taken up with dreams, we give into unseasable errors, we are possessed by empty cares, we are ignorant of standers by, and we fall into a disuse and forgetfulness of things. All this is occasioned by the brain when it is not in its due position. Let us to say, when it is not sound, but is hotter or colder, moister or drier, or, in fine, suffice anything contrary to what is natural or usual. The tongue is not more the organ of the taste, then the brain is that of thought. But let our discourse return to the place from whence it had digressed. Seven. The seeds of all things, begun from an eternal time, are composed out of the first bodies or most simple principles, the four commonly received elements being neither simple nor sufficient, for in an infinity all things are infinite, nay, even eternal, as nothing could be made out of nothing, and therefore we may conclude that the organic structure of seeds could not be formed out of any concourse of atoms or any species of motion whatsoever. To illustrate this tenet by some example or other, the seed of a tree is not alone in power a tree, according to the notion of Aristotle, but a real tree in which are all the integrant parts of a tree, though so minute as not to be perceived by the senses without microscopes, and not even then, but in a very few things. All that this tree wants is a fuller distinction and magnitude of parts which is gradually acquired by the application of simple bodies of distinct species that are as so many constituent parts necessary to the nourishment and increase of that simple body. Therefore no species of trees perishes in as much as the seeds in which it lives always remain alive, and should they be received in a proper place, forthwith they imbibe a more distinct conformation, nutrition, augmentation, and by degrees arrive at a due perfection. The same may be said of the other species of the universe, not only of animals and trees, but also of stones, minerals, and metals, which are not less vegetable and organic, having their own seeds, formed in their own matrix, and increasing with a peculiar in nutrition, as well as men, quadrupeets, reptiles, birds, fishes, and plants. Eight. This true, philosophers for the most part, are of opinion that gold, crystal, etc., are similar, or bodies of like nature and parts, made up of an external opposition, or any other way, because they appeared so to the senses. But the pantheists think that they consist of dissimilar parts, from whose comprehension, this or that having the ascendant as a principle of composition, arises the body called homomeres. There is no such thing to be met with as a similar mixed body, no, not even in metals and stones, for chemists demonstrate that such bodies are cemented by a manifold growing together of several substances, for which reason, from gold, than which nothing seems to be more similar, they extract sulfur, quicksilver, earth, and other things that go to the composition of this noble metal, though not all things, as this would exceed the bounds of human industry. In stones and metals we may behold sundry shapes of veins, such as the shoots, as it were, of branches and roots, spread far and wide, which they have in their minds and quarries, from whence, to appropriate to myself the words of a certain philosopher, a friendly element gently filtrates, first through passages more lex, afterwards gradually through more narrow ones, to refine and make pure the nutriment, and finally an exhalation passes through thin and hidden pores. As the blood flows up and down and is driven to the extremities of the body, so in the nature of blood an elementary substance distills through the narrow holes of stones and metals, from whence each part, through its own conduit, sucks in what is befitting its nature. If such a nutritious sap is less perceptible in them than in the stomach and veins of animals, let him remember who requires this from nature, that a distinct element from the parts does not appear more in trees whose anatomy notwithstanding has been executed by several. If one should say that in plants there are certain figures of a trunk, branches, leaves, blossoms, fruit, seeds, so also in these all this may be found, either analogous or in a different manner, and as plants themselves shrub not after the same way, why then should we admire if things propagated under the earth meet with a different kind of life? The man who at any time observed innumerable gems, beautifully distinguished by various figures, to grow in certain places, there's no reason he should believe they were less actuated with life than the teeth and bones of animals. As every country is not productive in everything, in like manner, all stones and all plants grow not everywhere, every place affords not a proper nourishment to every particular. Marble grows here, diamond there, one stone puts on its dew form sooner, another stone later, this seed generates pebbles that rocks. Stones receive an increase and decrease, are more or less durable as well as other vegetative beings, but some are at a stand when they perceive no room for nourishment and increase through such hard bodies and such narrow pores. Who say they can believe that the vast bulks of stones and metals are nourished like bones and increase by vegetation? What nutritious force can soften and dilate that invincible hardness? But to answer them by another question, what is admirable here that we behold not also in the teeth of animals? They are harder than most stones and metals, notwithstanding they imbibe their element through minute and imperceptible conduits and increase according to every dimension. Yet that teeth may receive the addition of a new substance that is necessary that each part should be as firmly compacted and diffused into a larger bulk, which in like manner would be feasible if a tooth was equal to a mountain or island. If this is no matter of wonder with regard to bones and the hardest trunks of trees, why pray should it seem next to a prodigy with regard to stones and metals? As growing trees and trees who down differ, so stones in quarries and stones hewed out of them, those are alive and these are dead, those in their native beds are full of sap, there torn asunder are destitute of moisture and at length are reduced to dust. In a word everything in the earth is organic and there is no equivocal generation or without its own seed of anything in nature, wherefore it is not without reason that the earth should receive the appellation of mother panspermia, to whom the son, Pamestor, is a never decaying husband, and this justifies my answer to a German innkeeper, who impersonately improtuned me to tell him what countryman I was. The son is my father, the earth my mother, the worlds my country, and all men are my relations, as if an ignorant and insipid person should accost me with this verse out of Homer. Who, from whence are you, where is your city, where was you born? Nine. The Pentists maintain the Pythagoric Astronomy, more properly called the Egyptian, or to speak with the moderns the Copernican, placing the son in the centre of the planets that turn about it, among which our earth is neither the least nor the most inconsiderable. Like unto it there are other innumerable earths, making their revolutions in stated times according to their respective distances about their own sons or fixed stars as they call them. The same they set fastly hold to, with regard to comments that describe the greatest circles. Good gods, whilst they devote themselves to the study of surveying the heavens and the earth, what an exquisite pleasure arises from the everlasting courses of wandering stars. In the contemplation of which they calculate both the velocity of the lesser and slowness of the greater, actuate it with one and the same motion of nature. Hence they easily conclude that there are no real wanderings of the planets, that none of them retrogrades, none of them stands, none of them goes out of its right road, howsoever these particulars might appear to the eyes of man. They also know exactly in what sense ancient connoisseurs understood the music of the seers, that so great and so sweet a sound, says Cicero, joined together by unequal rests, though in the exactest proportion is the result of the impulse and motion of the orbs themselves, and mingling sharps with flats constantly produces several harmonious concerts. The more ancient and wiser kind of philosophers understood this, not of a flat or sharp sound, not of the sevenfold division and agreement of tones, but of the wonderful harmony of these motions, whilst poets departing not from their art indulged their fancy, and whilst the monstrous forgers of solid spheres grew delirious, and as a punishment for their folly, in a manner heard the rapidity of the sound, how many and what agreeable problems are easily solved by the pupils or the pantheists. As among other things, by what means the slowest star can get up to the quickest, which is not alleged here, as a thing difficult to be explained, but that in a few words I might give some hints of their doctrine, with regard to the coincidence of extremes, if I am allowed the term, seeing that, pursuant to the rules of their institutes, I am not allowed to lay open the whole. From this coincidence of extremes, the pantheists deduce a certain third in truly wonderful motion of the earth, which is to be measured by the progress of the equinoxial points, the fixed showing it to a demonstration, and therefore by the flow by continued declination of the meridian lion. The axis of the earth, I say, rolls without seizing, always parallel to itself, about the pole of the ecliptic, from which it is distant in every place twenty-three degrees and a half, inclining to the plane of the ecliptic, and the equinoxes by degrees proceed to the southern parts, having nothing to do with the ecliptic. Then this there cannot be a clearer demonstration founded upon the observations of Aristarchus, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Holly, and other excellent ancient and modern astronomers, so that, when the equinoxes come to the tropic of Capricorn, there is a necessity of their proceeding farther to the Antarctic pole, and so afterwards by turning about to the Arctic. We Britons in reality are more remote now from the Arctic pole than in the time of Pithius, the Massilian, although the eighth sphere is at so great a distance from the earth, that the diversities, magnitudes, and oppositions of the celestial appearances, described by ancient astronomers, seem not so much change to the senses throughout the course of two thousand years and upwards. But that we have in effect come nearer to the Antarctic pole, not only the seasons of the year by little and little altered by the progress of the equinoxes are a testimony, but also a milder temperateness of the same seasons, proceeding from hence, which evidently appears from history in the authority of observations. This third motion, which I call equinoxial, to distinguish it from the diurnal and annual motion of the earth, proceeding gradually from east to west, brings matters so to pass that the sphere, called the eighth, or the region of visible fixed stars, though immovable, might seem nevertheless to go from west to east, so that whether the eighth sphere moves over the poles of the ecliptic in consequentia, or whether there is a progress of the equinoxes in Antiquedentia, the appearances will be the same, and all the same things will affect our sight. This phenomenon should be explained the same way as the other motions of the earth, formally attributed to the sun and planets, and it must be rescued from the absurdities of preting cavalers, both which we have sufficiently acquitted ourselves of in the third book of Esoterics. As a natural consequence of this equinoxial motion, every particle of our globe, the same may be said of the other planets, must, in the course of ages, undergo all sorts of adventures and vicissitudes. This inclination of the meridian, says every pantheist, shows that the axis of the earth does not always pass through opposite parts. Once it comes to pass, that by little in little and insensibly different and different regions are placed under the axis, and the inhabitants of the zone, now frigid, are brought back and turned to the equinoxial line. And, at length, the place of the arctic pole to the Antarctic and the east to the west, which Herodotus, from the sacred authority in mysterious monuments of the Egyptian priests, testifies to have happened formally twice. That is, the sun sets where it now rises, and rises as often where it now sets. This not only twice, but also innumerable times, has happened, and will happen in the eternal duration of things, although such a conversion of the stars, in a reduction of all parts into the same situation, requires a revolution of about thirty-six thousand years. Copernicus, it seems, would feign reduce this number to twenty-five thousand years. Oh, how often those have been made a jest of, who ridiculed the Egyptians, whose naked bounds they even understood not, unskilled in the pure astronomy. I may safely call them barbarous trawlers, juggling and ensnaring the minds of the little people with strangely monstrous whims. But from this observation, as that most ingenious man proceeds, on which mathematicians should employ all their care and study, we perceive a singular understanding of nature and admirable providence, that the same part of the earth should not be condemned to so long a cold, but that each and every region might partake in its time of all the aspects of the sun, which notwithstanding upon account of the slowness of motion and the short life of men is not discerned. That change of the axis might be also a proof of the force whereby the earth directs itself to a certain part of the Eighth Sphere, to pass gradually from one to another place of the earth, whence there is a necessity of the climates of regions being changed and the latitudes of cities and the situation of sundials placed upon the meridian line. Moreover, the equinoxial line of the earth is changed with the axis, and passes to another part of the earth. But as it is always perpendicular to the axis, if no other change happened, the equinoxial line would be still found under the star of Aries, as it was in the time of Eudoxus, and the equinoxial points would not have moved forward in Antecedentia. Notwithstanding that this comes to pass, it is most certain, for now the largest star is the horn of Aries, in which in Eudoxus' time the vernal equinox was placed, with regard to the ecliptic has at least the breadth of three degrees toward pieces, but with regard to the equator it has such a bending that it almost touches the tropic of Cancer, wherefore it necessarily follows that the ecliptic is changed, which was in the time of Eudoxus. The same change, by an almost parallel reason, holds good with regard to fluids and solids, moisture and dryness, for whatever is sea now was formerly land, and all that is now land will, in time to come, be sea, the bulk and aspect of the Terraqueous globe remaining always the same. This is a new doctrine, I confess, but a very true one, and of this opinion, unless I am mistaken, was, among other disciples of the Egyptians, the classominian Anexagoras, who being asked whether the mountains of L'Emsicum were to be at any time sea, yes, says he, unless time should fail, for he believed that they were partly discovered and partly made by the ebbing of the sea, as we shall explain elsewhere, and that they should be overwhelmed and consumed by its flowing. Wherefore the ocean, not without reason, was called by the ancients Amphitridii, because it environs, tears, and makes a havoc of the earth. The slowness of these conversions carries a face of difficulty when observed by some of the learned, but it is by those who proceed slowly, whereas, if the observations are made by the more sprightly, most commonly they become neglected by all, if not finally entirely forgotten. Hence it is that Theophrastus, dying, according to the relation of Tully, is sad to have accused nature for having granted a long life to hearts and ravens that did not want it, in such a span to men, to whom it would be a vast consequence to live longer, and could their days be lengthened, all arts and sciences would be brought to a perfection, and men's life would be improved in all kinds of learning. He, therefore, complained that death seized him when he had just began to have a glimmering light of these things. We examine now how just this complaint is, neither do we deny the truth of Hippocrates' maxim, life is short, but art is long. However, we are not entirely destitute of all help to pass a judgment upon the equinoxial motion, as it is evident to the learned that the same points of the earth turn no more towards the Great Bear, the Lesser Bear, and other fixed stars, which in the time of Hipparchus or even Ptolemy had such a situation, to say nothing of the remarkable changes of shores, islands, and other parts of our globe, occasioned by this vicissitude. Far be it from me that I should assert anything that is not proved by experience and reason, it is therefore, then, that I reject every precarious hypothesis and empty conjecture which are denied with a better right than projected. I discard in like manner and pass the same impartial judgment upon things granted and not evident or proved, and all such fallacies on which very often lies the whole stress of a demonstration. By this ebbing or declination of the sea I spoke of, which we allow to be more easily proved from the long continuance of time than from observation, certain bodies can be fully accounted for, especially sea bodies which are found in every part of the earth and not only buried deeply, but also very often broken from huge rocks in the hardest marble. That these are the real and identical bones, spoils, remains of fishes and other animals, the learned woodward, after the attempts of some others, has copiously demonstrated a man of great penetration in these studies and deserving well of the learned world for his curious observations and for showing that these are not sports of nature nor stones of their own kind nor terrestrial fishers or shells as many others have idly dreamed. We are to form no other judgment of the scraps of vegetables buried the same way. For all species of stones, as we hinted above, receive their increase, as well as all other vegetables, from a loose fluid matter suitable to them, which matters sometimes shuts up within itself the hard and small bodies that perchance fall in its way, or running into such bodies if hollow and by degrees petrifying the rim, as in a matrix, finally assumes their form. Thus it is that we must likewise explain the origin of figured stones as the Echites, Conchites, and all of the like kind. Aesoterics furnished us with a ready explanation, but not the universal deluge, such as there never was, the globe of the earth still remaining, among others the famous stilling fleet, Lake Bishop of Worcester, proving this clearly in his sacred origins, nor that ever it could be in reality be affected by the separation of parts, whatever way anyone should take to explain it. I say this, with a due deference to the learning and reputation of Burnett, Woodward, Whiston, and others, who have not exactly understood the narrative or dived thoroughly into the design of that wise logiver, Moses, with regard to the origin of things and the general flood, not to say that the history of these Egyptian philosophers concerning the rise, fall, and intermediate vicissitudes of things, abridged afterwards by those that followed him, was superstitiously or sillily rafted from its genuine signification by many, or vastly corrupted by idle jugglers. As the figuration of stones is understood by the pantheists, so also are the representations of plants and other things impressed upon stones. But trees, digged out of heady grounds in marshy places, are deservedly for the most attributed by them to tempests, inundations, earthquakes, and to men who hew them down, which I myself have very often found cut and burned. This is evidenced from proper arguments that cannot be now alleged, for we must not hear go to the bottom of things, or descend to particulars. Upon these, before recited, most solidly laid foundations of the immense and eternal universe, the pantheists build their philosophy and embellish it with all possible perfections. A more subtle explanation of things, and the solutions of phenomenons, are to be met with in our esoterics, it being our design to write at present, historically, and not physically. End of Section 3. Section 4 of Pantheistican. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leni. Pantheistican by John Toland. Of the ancient and modern societies of the learned, Sections 14-17. It will not be a missed remark as we go along, that the excellent author above quoted, upon diet, whom I judge to be not Hippocrates, but someone more ancient, delivered in a few words, like so many oracles, the whole doctrine of the revolution of all things, the appearances remaining always the same. For, after having reasoned upon the primary elements of nature, together with their infinite concretions and secretions, and deduced accurately from thence this theorem, everything is to all as all is to everything, he pursues his argument in the following words, as if delivered from a tripod. Each and everything, as well divine as human, is turned up and down. Days and nights have their increase and decrease, so also has the moon. There is an excess of fire and water. The sun too has various appearances with regard to us. Again, these and not these. Light to Jupiter is darkness to Pluto, and light to Pluto is darkness to Jupiter. Those come to and are transposed here, these there in all times. Those pass over what belongs to these, and these what belongs to those. They know not what they do, but they seem to themselves to know what they do, in what they see, they know not. But all things are actuated in them by a divine necessity, both what they will and what they know. Now those coming here, and these there, and mingled through one another, every one of them satisfies its destined fate, as well to more as to less. When once we know that in this remarkable passage, by divine celestial bodies, are understood, and by human terrestrial, that Pluto signifies the center of the earth, or of every globe, and Jupiter, the surface, or a circumfused air, these, I say, being well understood, that man will easily conceive all the rest, who, together with the mutual excess and recess of moist and dry, or the sea and land, comprehends those things I already inculcated concerning the continued declination of the Meridian Lion, and consequently concerning the not less continued, though almost imperceptible, change of the excess of the earth. All these particulars, duly considered, either with regard to the variation of particles always changing their place, or with regard to the constancy of never varying appearances the condition of all the globes in the infinite either, is alike, the contemplation of which is undoubtedly not only the most agreeable, but also the most noble of all the things that come within the verge of true philosophy. That the abetters of the universal deluge and general conflagration should not complain that nothing is granted them, weighing things in the scale of Heraclitus, and using his form of expression, we give up to them what they desire, and yet we do not. We say that the whole earth was overwhelmed by waters, and it was not, and again that all waters shall be conquered by fire, and shall not. But that no preposterous interpretation should be given to what we say, as it happened to that great philosopher, though upon a different matter, we shall set forth more manifestly our sentiments. Wherefore we maintain that, in reality, there's no part of the earth but was some time or other covered by sea, and that there is no part of the sea, but will be at length possessed by the earth. Forcessity or dryness, very often, among the writings of the ancients, has the signification of fire, of which it is both the property and effect. In the so often quoted books upon diet, we several times meet with fire in the sense of dry or solid, it being usual with writers to put the effect for the cause. The most ancient of the Hebrews, without any addition, used dry for earth, and the most ancient Greeks, moist absolutely for sea. So Moses spoke, so Homer. As therefore there is an excess of dry, so also there is a recess of moist, interchangeably succeeding each other, as well in the macrocosm, as microcosm. The whole earth, I say, was formerly buried under water, and the whole sea hereafter shall grow dry, or, which is the same, shall turn to fire. From which places misconstrued, and from the mysterious words of the Chaldeans misunderstood, flow the prodigy of the universal and final conflagration. Now that any such thing as that either an absolute sway of moist over dry or dry over moist has ever universally been, or shall be, in one and the same time, or together, as it is said, and at once, we not only simply deny it, but we prove that it is by no means possible. You are not so silly as to credit the Chaldean fables and stoical dreams, neither do we allow the supposed qualities of the peripatatics, which generating like ones to themselves can sometime or other reduce, or rather change, all others into themselves. Two theories are made out of these qualities, upon the permutation of the four elements, which are not elements as mixed, or, if they are simple, they are in no wise fit, as we before remarked, to expound the varieties of things, as neither is the matter of Descartes' first, second, and third elements. Nature opens a more ready way. Infinite, simple, and dissimilar substances, or the primary bodies of infinite species, movable and indivisible, make all the mixtures of all things, of which they themselves are the eternal, unexhausted, and immutable matter. But the concretions that proceed from them, as they have no other production than the various conjunctions of those bodies, so they have no other destruction than the separation of these same bodies, by whatever cause this falls out to be so. Thus, it need not be apprehended that generation should at any time fail the first substances remaining incorrupt, and their being always an ascent and descend of parts. Neither, in like manner, is it to be dreaded that any contrarity, whatever finally it is, should convert into itself, or consume the other parts of the universe, as there can be no division, much less permutation, of the first bodies. Hence, chymists, alas, may despond of ever finding the Philosopher's Stone. Therefore, a constant and perpetual reciprocation of all possible mixed bodies follow, by which nothing is truly destroyed in the universe. But, as I above mentioned, everything changes only its place, for which reason, though a creation out of nothing is looked upon by the Hebrew Kabbalists and the Philosophers of other nations to be the production of a thing, both out of the nothing of itself and out of the nothing of a pre-existing subject. Yet, all things can be said to be properly created, for all things, as we have shown, are so moved as to appear that there is a process and recess in infinitum. And, although the series of motions and the series of all things is eternal, yet there is no motion, no thing eternal, but all things are made anew, all things are truly created. But, of this, elsewhere. Now, what follows? In as much as to return now into the circle, philosophy is divided by the pantheists, as well as other ancient sages, into external or popular and depraved, and internal or pure and genuine, no discord arises among them, if every one of their brotherhood professes the heresy he's sucked in with his milk, so it be not entirely false, or that which has been anywhere established. They never enter into a dispute upon scholastic bubbles, supposing that, in different matters, nothing is more prudent than you would say, they must talk with the people and think with philosophers. But should the religion derived from one's father or enforced by the laws be holy, or in some respects wicked, villainous, obscene, tyrannical, or depriving men of their liberty, in such case the brethren may, with all the legality in the world, be take themselves immediately to one more mild, more pure, and more free. They not only steadfastly assert and hold to a liberty of thought, but also of action, detesting, at the same time, all licentiousness, and are sworn enemies of all tyrants, whether despotic monarchs or domineering nobles, or infectious mob leaders. Many of them are to be met with in Paris, in Venice also, in all the cities of Holland, especially at Amsterdam, and some, which is surprising, in the very court of Rome, but particularly, and before all other places, they abound in London, and have placed there the sea, and, as it were, the citadel of their sect. This plain, I speak not of the Royal British Society, nor of the French Academy of Virtuosos, nor of any such public assembly. The pantheists, as I intimated, instituted moderate and honest banquets, not luxurious and scandalous, not to please a nice and delicate pallet, but to bring together friends and relish the suites of conversation. There's no carousing in their society, no gaming at hazard or dyes, no piping, dancing, singing, sex but playing females, no stage-players' entertainments or farcical buffooneries, learned discourses, and apropos jokes are their operas and sweet-meats. These suppers, in a word, are not a pition or glutinous, but pure, simple, and elegant. The table is frugal, though neat. The furniture, indifferent, though clean, and the brow often cheerful, but never lowering. Towards the end, the waiters and servants, as so many profane and illiterate persons, are shut out, and the doors being closely bolted, according to the custom of the ancients, the brethren variously converse upon various topics. As the bottle is in common to all, so also is discourse. Some question or other, besides the arguments perhaps started, is proposed to be solved by the assembly, as in the platonic banquet, or as in the xenophantic. Each person gives an account of his task, either imposed upon him by himself or by others. They treat of serious and grey things, without contention, of ludicrous and pleasant, without levity. Important disputes are entered upon, concerning the knowledge of the most worthy things, and from matters indifferent arise agreeable interludes. As to the order that is observed in these societies, they have a president, whose authority is the same as that which was formerly enjoyed by the Greeks and Romans upon a like occasion. At every meeting the brethren of every respective place are present, unless some or other of them is detained by sickness, or is upon a journey, or can allege a reasonable excuse for absenting himself. They have, which is most worthy to be related and known, a form of celebrating the socratic society divided into three parts, and containing the loss, axioms and maxims of the society. We shall soon present the reader with a view of it. One part is always read in every meeting, the first usually, or the last, the president solemnly reciting before, the rest entering, and sometimes bearing quarries with him. Most is said alternatively, according to that verse of Virgil, Homer first suggesting it. And alternate measures sing, alternate measures please the muses best. But the whole form is repeated on solstices and equinoxes, whose conversations, by the mediation and influence of the sun, produce the vicissitudes of seasons, and all other changes that happen in our globe. The whole form is also read at other times, especially upon the admission of a new brother, which is never done but by the unanimous consent of all, although he can be discarded by a majority of votes. The president, to make no room for debates in elections, follow the order of their admission into the society, and in meetings the late president speaks first, and the new one is the steward of the feast. They frequently interpret the philosophical canon, displaced in the second part of the form, and deduce from it the most abstruse theorems of natural philosophy, according to the sentiments of the ancient Socratics. And it is not a myth that it is adjusted to the sentiments of the modern Socratics to it the pantheists or the brethren, as appears from propositions placed on the margin, that none should make least struple upon any particular to pass by in silence, as I consult brevity, other interpretations of sublime matters made by them. At stated times they ruminate on the law of nature, the true and never deceiving reason, as it is exhibited in the last part of the form. By the brightness of whole rays they dispel all darkness, exempt themselves from trifling cares, reject all pretended revelations, for what men of sense doubts of true ones, explode forged miracles, unreasonable mysteries, ambiguous oracles, and lay open all the seats, tricks, fallacies, frauds, old wives tales, whereby a thick cloud envelops religion and a pitchy night overstrets truth. But the form now presents itself. End of Section 4. Section 5 of Pantheistikan. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording of The President by Anna Simon. Respondent. Recorded by Ruth Golding. Pantheistikan by Don Toland. Section 5. The first part of the form of celebrating this Socratic Society, containing the morals and axioms of the Society. The President speaks. May all happiness await our meeting. The rest answer. We institute a Socratic Society. May philosophy flourish. And the polite arts. Attent with silence. Let this assembly, and all that is to be thought, spoke, and done therein, be consecrated to truth, liberty, health, the triple wish of the wise. Both now and forever more. Let us be called equals and brothers. Companions, too, and friends. Let us banish, strive, envy, and obstinacy. Let us harbour sweetness, knowledge, and politeness. Let jokes and mirth be our pleasures. May the muses and graces be propitious. We must not be bigoted to any one's opinion. No, not even to that of Socrates himself, and let us detest all priestcraft. To make all things notwithstanding the more authentic, by the sanction of proper authors and the best of men, without intruding, though, at the same time, upon the rites of liberty, harkening to, beloved companions, the words of the most grave censor, Marcus Porcus Cato, related by Marcus Tullius Cicero, that renowned father of his country, in the thirteenth chapter of the book, The Cinectote. We are, therefore, votaries of truth and liberty, that we might rescue ourselves from tyranny and superstition. I always had, says Cato, the greatest veneration for companions, and it was therefore, in my questership, that I instituted fellowships on the idian festivals of the great mother. I feast with my companions, but very soberly, as still there remained a certain heat of age, which, gradually cooling, everything daily became more mild and temperate. Moreover, I esteem not so much feasting for the pleasure it gives the body, as for the coming together and conversation of friends. Our ancestors justly called the sitting down of friends at table an entertainment, because it tended to the cementing of social life. The Greeks, who call it drinking and sopping together, have not turned it so well, inasmuch as, in that respect, they seem to make the greatest account of what should be made the least. Let Socrates and Plato be praised, and Marcus Cato and Marcus Cicero. Let us discuss everything seriously, and fill up the chasms of discourse with diverting stories. Let us search out, diligently, the causes of things, that we might live pleasantly and die peaceably. That free from all fear, neither elated by joy, nor depressed by sadness, we might always maintain an unshaken constancy. That we may also laugh, to scorn the bug-bears of the silly people, and the inventions of crafty knaves, let us sing an ennoying strain. I value not to straw the auger-marsus, nor strolling quacks, nor strolling fortune-tellers, nor Issac, soothsayers, nor dream-expanders. They are all an ignorant pack of boobies, superstitious prophets, shameless conjurers, idle, crazy, poor vagrants. What they themselves have no faith in, others for sooth must believe. From those they promise riches to, they crave a groat. Let them then, from these riches, subtract the groat, and restore the remainder. Here are still, too, you best of friends, the same wise Cato, in the fourteenth chapter of the same book they scenic tutti, teaching as divinely after his example, to be healthful, cheerful, and happy. I take a singular pleasure, says he, in the magistries that have been instituted by our predecessors, and in the discourses that, according to ancient custom, are made by the steward of the feast, and in the cups, as in Xenophon's banquet, although small, yet bedewed with liquor, and in a cooling arbor in the summer, and in the grateful physis-dewed of the sun's warmth, and that of a winter fire. These pleasures of life I also seek after in my sabine retirement, and constantly make one of the guests at the entertainment of my neighbours, which we spin out till it is late in the night, discoursing upon various topics. Let Xenophon be the theme of our praise, and the rustic sabines the subject of our imitation. Let us greatly feed our minds, but sparingly our bellies. Tis just and good. Let us toast the graces. Come, tis a sober toast, and we shall drink it soberly. End of the first part. End of Section 5. Section 6 of Pantheisticon This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Respondent recorded by Ruth Golding. President recorded by Anna Simon. Pantheisticon by John Toland. Section 6. The second part, containing the deity and philosophy of the society. Keep off the profane people. The coast is clear, the doors are shut, all safe. All things in the world are one, and one is all and all things. What's all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither begotten nor ever to perish. In Him we live, we move, and exist. Everything is sprung from Him, and shall be reunited to Him. He Himself being the beginning and end of all things. Let us sing a hymn upon the nature of the universe. Whatever this is, it animates all things, forms, nourishes, increases, creates, buries, and takes into itself all things, and the same of all things is apparent. From thence, all things that receive a being into the same are a new result. Sometimes the following. All things within the verge of mortal laws are changed. All climates in revolving years know not themselves. Nations change their faces, but the world is safe and preserves its all. Neither increased by time nor worn by age, its motion is not instantaneous. It fatigues not its course, always the same it has been and shall be. Our fathers saw no alteration, neither shall posterity. It is God who forever is immutable. Philosophy, Thou guide of life, Thou searcher out of virtue, Thou expeler of vice. What not only would become of us, but even what would be the life of man without thee. Thou hast founded cities, Thou hast gathered dispersed mankind into a society of life, Thou hast united them to each other, first by a participation of the same abode, afterwards by wedlock, and finally by a communion of letters and words. Thou hast been the giver of laws and the mistress of manners and discipline. We have recourse to thee, we implore thy aid, we devote ourselves entirely to thee. One day spent well, and according to thy dictates, is to be preferred to prevericating immortality. Whose riches should we rather use than nine? Now I say that has granted us a perfect tranquillity of life, and hath exempted us from the terrors of death. Reason is the true and first law, the light and splendour of life. Think not, as ye often see recounted in fables, that those who have been guilty of wicked actions are scared and agitated by the flaming torches of fury's. Every man's own fraud, every man's own terror disturbs him most. Every man's own wickedness spurs him on to madness. His own bad thoughts and the conscience of his mind fill him with dismal apprehensions. These are the constant and domestic furies of the wicked. To lead a happy life virtue alone is sufficient, and is to itself an ample reward. What's honest is the soul good. Neither is there anything useful but what is laudable. Now, dearly beloved brethren, the Philosophical Canon is to be distinctly read. It must be weighed attentively, and must stand the test of your judgement. As the contemplation of the nature of things is agreeable, so also it is a most useful science. By attention, therefore, we shall weigh and judge. The ancient philosophers, in order to discuss what nature was, divided it into two things, the one efficient, the other that which is affected. To that which affects they supposed a force inherent, and to that which is affected a certain matter. To both notwithstanding both inherent, for matter itself cannot cohere unless contained by some force, nor force without some matter, as everything is compelled to be somewhere, the result of both they called a body, and as it were a certain quality. Some of these qualities are original, others derived from them. The original are of one kind and simple, the derived from them are various, and of manifold shapes. Air, fire, water, and earth are therefore original, and from them spring the forms of animals, and all those things that are generated from the earth, and wherefore they are called beginnings and elements, of which the air and fire have the force of moving and affecting the other parts, that of receiving, and as it were, of being passive, I mean the water and earth. But they imagine a certain matter without any species, and devoid of all that quality, to be comprised in all, out of which all things are extracted, and by which all things are affected, capable of receiving all, and imparting to them all kinds of changes, undergoing also the same dissolution, not annihilation, but rather a reproduction of things into their own parts, which can be cut and divided in infinitum, in as much as the minutest thing in nature can suffer a division. What's moved moves in spaces, which can be divided also in infinitum, and as that force which we called quality, is so moved and agitated up and down backwards and forwards, so must likewise all and every part of matter, and thus conjointly affect the things that are called qualia, out of which in every coherent and continued nature, with all its parts, the world was made, externally to which there's no part of matter nor no body existing. All the things that are in the world are parts of the world, and comprised in an intelligent nature, endowed with perfect reason, and the same eternal, for there's nothing stronger to bring it to destruction, this force they call the soul of the world, as also a mind and perfect wisdom, and consequently, guard. To this reason they attribute, as it were, a certain prudent knowledge of all the things that are subject to it, and therefore suppose that first and principally it takes care of celestial things, and afterwards on earth of what belongs to man. This administration is sometimes called by them necessity, because nothing can happen contrary to what it has appointed, as being a fatal and immutable continuation of the everlasting order. Sometimes it is termed fortune, because it executes many things unexpectedly with regard to us, upon account of the obscurity and our ignorance of causes. The nature of the efficient, no more than that of the effect, leaves us here after no room for doubt. We must set forth the praises of the heavenly origin of souls, infused into the greatest and smallest. Some think, by these appearances induced, that to the bees an energy divine, and part of the celestial mind is given, for that a God, diffused through all the mass, pervades the earth, the sea, and deep of air. Hence men and cattle, herds and savage beasts, all at their births, receive ethereal life. Hither again, dissolved, they back return, nor death takes place, but all immortal fly to heaven, and in their proper stars reside. Let us now make honorable mention of those men and women among the ancients, who taught or acted nobly, that they may benefit us by their example, as well as learning. The sacred memory of Salomo, Thalus, Anaximander, Xenophonus, Melissus, Ossolus, Democritus, Parmenides, Decarchus, Confucius, Cleobulina, Theano, Pemphala, Cerelia, Hepacea. May it tend to our advantage. Let us praise all other philosophical companies, and commemorate the male and female votaries of truth. Let the praiseworthy be praised and honoured. Let us toast the muses. Come, we'll drink it moderately. End of the second part. End of section six. Section seven of Pantheisticon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. President, read by Alessandro Galliardi. Respondent, read by Anaximon. Pantheisticon by John Toland. The third part of the form of celebrating the Socratic society, containing the liberty of the society, and a law neither deceiving nor to be deceived. We must always wish that there should be a sound mind and a sound body, and as life is not to be laid down on a slight pretext, so death is never to be dreaded. Nothing more is to be wished for, and to effect this we must use our utmost endeavours, but as therefore sing joyfully and tunably. The man in conscious virtue bold, who dares his secret purpose hold, unshaken hears the crowd's tumultuous cries, and the impetuous pirate's angry brow defies, that the loud winds that rule the seas, their wilds and pestress' horrors raise, that Joe's red arm with thunder rend the spheres, beneath the crush of worlds undaunted he appears. Francis. Among the wise, Murth is more esteemed than gain. Murth is the characteristic of a free man, sadness that of a slave. It is better to rule over none than to be any man's slave. One may live unerbally without a servant, but there's no living at any rate with a master. But it is necessary to obey the laws, for without them there's no property, no safety. We are therefore servants of the laws that we may be free. There's as wide a difference between liberty and the sensuousness as between liberty and slavery. Here, therefore, noble equals, consider with yourselves and always show in your actions the unerring rule for living well, dying happily, and doing all things properly. A rule, I say, not to be deceived, and a law never deceiving, to be delivered to you now, in the very words in which formerly Marcus Tullius inimitably expressed it. With open ears and hearts erect, we shall listen. Right reason is the only true law, a law befitting nature, extended to all, consistent with itself, and everlasting. A law that invites men to their duty by commanding, and deters from fraud by forbidding. A law that commands or forbids not in vain the honest, and on the contrary, by commanding or forbidding moves not the dishonest. It is not lawful to abrogate this law, nor derogate anything from it, nor wholly abrogate it. Neither can we, by the Senate or people, be exempted from this law. We are not to seek for any other explainer or interpreter of this law but itself. It is not a different law at Rome from what it is at Athens, more different now from what it shall be hereafter, but one in the same law, eternal and immortal, has and shall contain all times and nations. There shall be one, as it were, common matter and ruler of all, that God, the inventor, umpire, and giver of this law. He who obeys not this law is his own enemy. He scorns the nature of man, and therefore shall undergo the greatest punishments, though he escapes all other supposed ones. We are willing to be brought up and governed by this law, not by the lying and superstitious fictions of man. Laws framed by men are neither clear nor universal, nor always the same, nor ever efficacious. They are therefore useful to few or wholly to none. Interpreters alone accept it. Be still attentive. Superstition says Tully, whose words are unquestionably true, over spreading nations, seized upon almost the minds of all, and took possession of the weakness of men. This is evident from my books upon the nature of the gods, and I have cleared it up to my utmost in this dispute upon divination. For I have flattered myself, that I should conduce not a little to my own particular advantage, and that of my country, if I could find a means to root it out entirely. Not that it should be understood that by destroying superstition religion is also destroyed, for it is a wise man's business to uphold the institutions of his ancestors, and retain their rights and ceremonies. But what I intimate is, that the beauty of the world, and the order of heavenly things, force us to confess, that there exists an excellent and eternal nature, which should be the object of the contemplation and admiration of all mankind. Wherefore, as the religion is to be propagated, that's joined to the knowledge of nature, so all the roots of superstition are to be plucked out and cast away. The superstitious man, asleep or awake, enjoys no repose. He lives not happily, nor dies securely, who, living and dying, is a prey to silly priests. Whatever time, nature has allotted every man for life. He should be satisfied with it. He who dreads would cannot be avoided, can never possess a sedate mind. But he who fears not death, because necessary, prepares a safeguard for a happy life. As our birth brought us the beginning of all things, so shall our death be end. As nothing of these belong to us before our birth, so nothing shall after death. He is a great fool who weeps. He shall not be alive a thousand years hence. As he who weeps, that he has not lived to a thousand years. To fame and custom only, funeral palms and solemnities should be granted. They are therefore to be despised by us, but not to be neglected. Let's toast some health. Come, my humble service to the society. It shall go round in full bumpers. Let the new president give orders for all other particulars. It shall be done. Afterwards they feast temperately, teaching one another and learning, which is the symbol and principal scope of the society. End of Section 7 Recording by Linny Pantheisticon by John Toland Section 8 The two last stanzas taken from Horace, inserted in the last part of the form, are not always chanted. Other olds of the same poet are also sung entirely, adapted to the various circumstances of times and things, as it seems proper to the president. Such are those that are conducive to wisdom and even temper, the reformation of life, mirth and innocence, as in a particular manner the following. We desut altastet niue candidum, Book 1 or 9, qui dedicatum pos kitap o l'onem, Book 1 or 31, nulus argento coloresta waris, Book 2 or 2, aicuam memento rebusinadduis, Book 2 or 3, rectius viwes likini nequaltum, Book 2 or 10, eheu fugaques postume postume, Book 2 or 14, yampau caratra iugera regiae, Book 2 or 15, utiundi woz rogat impatenti, Book 2 or 16, non eburne quawreum, Book 2 or 18, odi profanum vulgus etarcheo, Book 3 or 1, angus tamiki pauperi empati, Book 3 or 2, coelos supi nasitun deiris manus, Book 3 or 23, intaktis opulentior, Book 3 or 24, difugere niwez rede untiam gram in acampis, Book 4 or 7, jamu edis komites paimare temperant, Book 4 or 12, beatusi likui proku negotis, epoldu hori da tempestas coelun contraxite timbres, epoldu twelfh. End of Section 8. Section 9 of Pantiisticon. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Pantiisticon by John Toland. Section 9 of a twofold philosophy of the Pantiists that should be followed, to which is subjoined a short dissertation upon the idea of the best and most accomplished man. 1. We have in the preliminary dissertation, with as much conciseness as perspicuity, discussed the nature, regulation, and names of private societies, or learned entertainments, among the Greeks and Romans. And at the same time, we have not concealed the state or origin of the modern Socratic society, which we made the chief subject of our discourse. By the extraordinary form of this society now first brought to light, any one may see plainly that the manners of the brethren are not morose, rather polite and elegant, nay even devoid of all vice and just censure. Moreover, the laws of this agreeable banquet, not less just than prudent, are to be learned. And the attractive charms of liberty, far remote from all licentiousness, are to be thoroughly read, so much the more, as nothing is so prized by the brotherhood, as not only the cultivating of modesty, continents, justice, and all kinds of virtues themselves, but also of exciting others, as well by words as example to their practice. But they treat of all these human things humanely. You shall have jokes without gall, and liberty not to be dreaded in the morning, and no restraint laid upon your tongue. You may perceive that their religion is simple, clear, easy, without blemish, and freely bestowed, not painted over, not intricate, embarrassed, incomprehensible, or mercenary. Not luring minds with silly fables, and ensnaring them by the filth, inhumanity, or ridicule of superstition. Not subservient, I say, to the private advantage of any family or faction against the public good. Not scandalizing or railing at, much less disturbing or tormenting any person or persons, so that they be honest and peaceable men. There is no occasion to make a longer discourse upon the improvement of the mind. The panteists can deservedly be styled the mists and higher afants of nature. For as formerly the druids, men of an elevated genius, kept up to the strictness of their brotherly union, as the authority of Pythagoras has decreed, so also they were versed in the knowledge of the most abstruse things, and their minds were lifted up by the contemplation of the sublimist mysteries. The Socratic companions strenuously ruminate upon the same studies for which the druids and Pythagoras made themselves so illustrious, both instituted societies, yet the panteists allow not all their words and deeds. For where they depart from truth, there we also depart from them, praising voluntarily what we approve of, and giving thanks to those by whose labour we have in any shape benefited ourselves. 2. But perhaps it may be imputed as a fault to the panteists for embracing two doctrines, the one external or popular, adjusted in some measure to the prejudices of the people, or to doctrines publicly authorised for true, the other internal or philosophical, altogether conformable to the nature of things, and therefore to truth itself. 3. And, moreover, for proposing this secret philosophy, naked and entire, unmasked, and without any tedious circumstance of words, in the recesses of a private chamber, to men only of consummate poverty and prudence. 4. But what person, unless equally ignorant of the disposition of the human genius, and what's transacted in nature, doubts that they act wisely? The reason of what I say is manifest. For no religion, no sect, can brook a contradiction, much less can endure that their doctrines should be charged with error or falsity, and their ceremonies with vanity or folly. All things, and please you, are sent down to them from heaven, although they gape after earthly desires. They are divine, if you credit them, and indispensable necessary for the regulation of life, although it is evident that they are human, empty also, and superfluous, and often monstrous fictions. Nay, even for the most part, destructive to the common and public tranquillity, as it appears to a demonstration from daily experience. Amongst so many various and disagreeing opinions, if it is not possible that none of them should be true, at least it is impossible that more than one of them should be true. This is an acute observation long ago made by Tully in discussing the nature of the gods. Wherefore the pantheists, persons of the strictest moderation, behave towards frantic, foolish and stubborn men, as fond nurses do towards their babbling minions, who imbibe from them the pleasing infatuation of imagining themselves kings and queens, that they are the only papa and mama's pets, and that there are none so pretty and so fine as they. Those that flatter not infants in these trifles are odious and disagreeable to them. Those on the other hand, who do adhere not by line and level to the opinions of the ignorant, though adults, are abominated and ill-used. Their inveteracy is brought to such a pitch that they deign not to keep them company. They oblige them with no office of humanity. They would fain have them whilst alive, prohibited fire and water, and when dead, eternally tormented. But as superstition is always the same in vigor, though sometimes different in rigor, and as no wise man's attempt was a miss in rooting it out of the minds of all persons, which could not be compassed at any rate, yet he'll use his endeavours to do all that can be done—that is, by plucking out the teeth and pairing the nails of this worst and most pernicious of monsters, he will not suffer it at its pleasure to hurt on every side. It is to men in power, and politicians actuated with this noble disposition of mind, that we are indebted for all the religious liberty that is anywhere nowadays to be met with, which has redounded not a little to the great advancement of letters, commerce, and civil concord. Whereas, on the contrary, to the superstitious or pretended worshippers of supreme powers, I mean to spirit haunted enthusiasts, or scrupulously pious, are owing all feuds, animosities, mutinies, mulks, rapines, stigmates, imprisonments, banishments, and deaths. Thus it necessarily must happen, that one thing should be in the heart, and in a private meeting, and another thing abroad, and in public assemblies. This maxim has often been greatly invoked, and practised not by the ancients alone, for to declare the truth it is more in use among the moderns, although they profess it is less allowed. 3. Having thus briefly established the twofold philosophy of the ancients, it will be no difficult matter to understand that the pantheists, among so many different sects in vogue and their mutual scuffles, I wish not massacres and carnage, lead a peaceable life, and neither hurried away by a love for those, nor a hatred for these, study the safety of the republic, and the common good of mankind, sworn enemies of all debates and parties. If those who are going astray are pleased to be put upon the right road, they will courteously point it out to them. If they persist in their error they will not withstand, friendly and from their hearts, exercise a commerce of life with them. They know, and lay it down for a principle, that no man is to be disdained or scorned upon account of indifferent and harmless opinions, and that whatever nation or religion he is of, his company, for the virtues and excellencies of his mind, is to be fought for, and in no wise to be avoided, but for his vices and the corruption of his morals. Therefore a pantheist will never punish or disgrace any man for a mere sentiment. For sayings, I say, or actions that hurt no man, neither will he advise or instigate others to defile themselves by such a notorious piece of villainy. Fraudulent priests, or impotent, silly women, may stir up magistrates against them, not able at the same time to lay any crime to their charge, or upbrade them with anything, except that they cannot solve their objections, or because they live a life more agreeable to the dictates of reason and more uprightly than they themselves do. But none in a public employ, or charged with the interest of the public, will give ear to these brain-sick, fantastic persons, unless he is a man blinded by superstition, or, on the other hand, a slave to ambition and filthy gain, and consequently regardless of the honour that is due to virtue and merit. As for the rest, the Socratic companions, laying no stress upon the praise and scandal of others, make it their total endeavour to live after their own, and not another's fancy, contented with their lot. They correct their hearts with virtuous precepts, and embellish their minds with learning, the better and with greater ease to be serviceable to themselves, their friends, and all persons. To approach moreover, though they should never attain to it, with more certainty and nearer to that perfection which every good and learned man is obliged to have at heart, and wish for either to acquire it for himself or impart it to others. Cicero to whom our society is indebted for so many and such excellent things, towards the end of his first book of laws, has furnished us with a distinct and exact idea of the best and most accomplished man. Let the learned then read, and form themselves, according to this rule. Four. He that knows himself, says Tully, will first suppose that he has something divine, and he will think in himself that his genius is consecrated like any image of worship, and he will always act and think in a manner worthy of so great a favour of the gods. And when he has thoroughly known and wholly proved himself, he will understand how nature has set him off for life, and what considerable means he has to obtain and acquire wisdom. Inasmuch as at first he imbibed in his mind an imperfect knowledge of all things, adorned by which, and guided by wisdom, let him show himself, according as his soul makes a greater progress towards perfection, a better man. And as a necessary consequence of his goodness let him contemplate his happiness. For when his mind, formed by the knowledge and practice of virtue, has quitted its fondness and indulgence for the body, has laid a restraint upon pleasure as a stain to beauty, has made void the terrors of death and pain, has entered into a society of love with its own, has reputed all its own, whom nature has united by a mutual benevolence, has embraced the true worship of the deity and the purity of religion, and has sharpened the edge as well of the wit as eyes to choose good and reject the contrary, which virtue from its forecast is called prudence. What situation can be said or thought to possess a more extensive happiness? The same accomplished man, when with due consideration he has taken a view of the heavens, earth, seas, the nature of all things, the causes of their generation, where they run back again, when and how they are to be dissolved, what is mortal and perishable in them, what divine and heavenly. When he has almost laid hold of the being that rules and governs these things, when he has discovered himself to be not enclosed within one wall the native of any circumscribed place but a citizen of the whole world as one city, in this magnificent appearance of things, and in this contemplation and knowledge of nature ye immortal powers, how well he shall know himself. An advice imparted to us by the Pythian Apollo, how he shall despise, scorn and repute as nothing what commonly is deemed the height of pomp and grandeur. As by a kind of rampire he'll fortify all these particulars with staunch arguments, a just discernment of truth and falsehood, and a certain science and art of understanding. He'll know what conclusions he is to draw from his premises and what is repugnant to everything. As he's sensible that he is born for civil society, he will not only enter into the discussion of these matters by the subtleties of dispute, but also by a continued discourse, by which he may rule people, establish laws, chastise the wicked, defend the good, praise illustrious men, deliver wholesome precepts and persuasive encomiums to his citizens, exhort to honour, recall from wickedness, comfort the afflicted, and exhibit by everlasting monuments the transactions and ordinances of the brave and wise to the indelible disgrace of the wicked. Now, as so many and such mighty things are perceivable in man, by those who are willing to know themselves, we must necessarily conclude that wisdom is both their parent and the nurse that trains them up. Five. But who is it that would not be willing to be more wise and better? Who is it that could not? And where's the end of any discipline but to make men wise and good? If it is deficient in these respects, it seems to me for the greater part useless, though not entirely for ornament and elegant sake to be rejected. Wherefore the pantheas to become wise, or at least possessed of the next degree to wisdom, shall not in the first place, to his prejudice, run counter to the received theology, that in philosophical matters swerves from truth. Neither shall he be altogether silent when a proper occasion presents itself, yet he shall never run the risk of his life but in defence of his country and friends. As to the most holy maxims of the messiahs which are ever and always to be professed, though without base additions and sinister interpretations, we undertake not to speak of them here, the place being foreign to them. Secondly, all the truths that the pantheist can with safety disclose, as politics, astronomy, mechanics, economics, and such like, he shall not only not envy them to others, but even voluntarily communicate them, still never without a due caution, because the commonality weighs most things in the scales of opinion, and but very few in those of truth. Finally he shall exactly estimate, and in the silence of his heart, meditate upon the more sacred dogmas, regarding either the nature of God or of the soul, and he shall not make the wicked nor the ignorant nor any except the brethren alone or other ingenious upright and learned men, partakers of esoterics. I am conscious to myself that this silence and prudent reservedness of mind will not be agreeable to all persons, however the pantheists shall not be more open till they are at full liberty to think as they please and speak as they think. Six. Perhaps one more curious and considerate should ask whether in effect such a society exists. Whether the form we exhibited is there recited, or rather as some have projected for models the best of kings and the best regulated commonwealths so to the image of the most agreeable and learned society all these things have been framed concerning the pantheists. Perhaps, good sir. And what then, pretty, if the thing is so? Figure to yourself that they are not true, notwithstanding you must acknowledge them to be probable. They are all consistent with themselves, as in the most undoubted matters. Or if you are willing to have a mixture of truth and falsehood, you may judge that those who read this Socratic assembly shall reap no less advantage from it than from the chorus of horrors as it commands virtue and forbids vice. Bridal's wild rage loves rigid honesty and strict observance of impartial laws, sobriety, security, and peace, and begs the gods to turn blind fortune's wheel to raise the wretched and pull down the proud. Lord Roscommon. If a person in poetry or painting should frame to himself a mistress adorned with all possible beauties and graces, though in reality he is not in the possession of such a one, yet he will not be thought to be devoid of love or averse from beauty. But to clear up the matter in one word, there are undoubtedly in several places not a few pantheists who, according to the custom of others, have their private assemblies and societies where they feast together, and what is the sweetest kind of source where they philosophise over it. Whether or know that form or any part of it is always and everywhere recited among them, I leave undecided. For your part, reader, whoever you are, make use of it, and I heartily wish that it may tend to your advantage. End of Section 9 and End of Pantheisticon by John Toland