Explore the full ebook collection and download it now at textbookfull.

com

From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in

Aristotle 1st Edition Mariska Leunissen

https://textbookfull.com/product/from-natural-character-to-
moral-virtue-in-aristotle-1st-edition-mariska-leunissen/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Browse and Get More Ebook Downloads Instantly at https://textbookfull.com

Click here to visit textbookfull.com and download textbook now
 Your digital treasures (PDF, ePub, MOBI) await
Download instantly and pick your perfect format...

Read anywhere, anytime, on any device!

Character and moral psychology 1st Edition Miller

https://textbookfull.com/product/character-and-moral-psychology-1st-
edition-miller/

textbookfull.com

From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of

Character Alberto Masala And Jonathan Webber (Eds.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/from-personality-to-virtue-essays-on-
the-philosophy-of-character-alberto-masala-and-jonathan-webber-eds/

textbookfull.com

Handbook of Moral and Character Education 2nd Edition

Larry Nucci

https://textbookfull.com/product/handbook-of-moral-and-character-
education-2nd-edition-larry-nucci/

textbookfull.com

Moral Injury and the Promise of Virtue Joseph Wiinikka-

Lydon

https://textbookfull.com/product/moral-injury-and-the-promise-of-
virtue-joseph-wiinikka-lydon/

textbookfull.com
Virtue Ethics and Moral Knowledge Philosophy of Language
after MacIntyre and Hauerwas 1st Edition Smith

https://textbookfull.com/product/virtue-ethics-and-moral-knowledge-
philosophy-of-language-after-macintyre-and-hauerwas-1st-edition-smith/

textbookfull.com

Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to

Aristotle 5th Edition S. Marc Cohen

https://textbookfull.com/product/readings-in-ancient-greek-philosophy-
from-thales-to-aristotle-5th-edition-s-marc-cohen/

textbookfull.com

Rethinking Presuppositions From Natural Ontology to

Lexicon 1st Edition Marco Fasciolo

https://textbookfull.com/product/rethinking-presuppositions-from-
natural-ontology-to-lexicon-1st-edition-marco-fasciolo/

textbookfull.com

The healing virtues : character ethics in psychotherapy

1st Edition Waring

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-healing-virtues-character-ethics-
in-psychotherapy-1st-edition-waring/

textbookfull.com

Questions of character 1st Edition Fileva

https://textbookfull.com/product/questions-of-character-1st-edition-
fileva/

textbookfull.com
i

From Natural Character

to Moral Virtue in Aristotle
ii
iii

From Natural Character

to Moral Virtue in Aristotle

mariska leunissen

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–​0–​19–​060221–​5

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
v

For Lisa
vi
╇vi

CONTENTS

List of Tablesâ•… xi
Acknowledgmentsâ•… xiii
Introductionâ•… xv
Abbreviationsâ•… xxxi

PART I ╇ |╇The Physiology and Science of Natural

Characterâ•…
CHAPTER 1 The Physiology of Natural Characterâ•… 3
1.1 Introductionâ•… 3

1.2 A Well-╉Mixed Natural Character and the Ease

of Habituationâ•… 5

1.3 The Relation among Natural Character, Blood, and Material

Natureâ•… 9

1.4 Human Physiology, Blood, and Natural Characterâ•… 26

CHAPTER 2 Changing Natural Characterâ•… 32

2.1 Introductionâ•… 32

2.2 The Influence of Diet, Aging, and Disease on Natural

Characterâ•… 33

2.3 The Influence of Environmental Factors on Natural

Characterâ•… 42
vi

2.4 Some Moral Implications of Aristotle’s Views about Natural

Character 48

CHAPTER 3 The Science of Natural Character 55

3.1 Introduction 55

3.2 Aristotle’s Familiarity with the Science of Physiognomy 58

3.3 Physiognomy in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 61

3.4 Physiognomy in Aristotle’s Biological Treatises 66

PART II | The Physiology of Moral Development

CHAPTER 4 Eugenics and the Production of Good Natural
Character 81
4.1 Introduction 81

4.2 The Production of Male Offspring with “Good” Bodies

and Characters in the Ideal City 82

4.3 The Moral Advantages and Heredity of “Good Birth”

and “Natural Talent” 90

4.4 A Biological Account of the Heritability of Natural

Character 95

CHAPTER 5 Perfection and the Psychophysical Process

of Habituation 105
5.1 Introduction 105

5.2 The Acquisition of Character Virtue in Physics VII 3 110

5.3 Perfection and the Psychophysical Process of Habituation

in the Ethical Treatises 115

5.4 A Psychophysical Account of Habituation Based on Physics

VII 3 130

CHAPTER 6 The Natural Character and Moral Deficiencies

of Women 139
6.1 Introduction 139

6.2 The Generation of Women and Their Biological

Imperfections Relative to Men 140

viii | Contents
ix

6.3 From Natural Character to the Virtue of Assistants

in Women 152

6.4 A Psychophysical Account of the Moral Deficiencies

in Women 167

CHAPTER 7 Conclusion 177

Bibliography 183
Index—Rerum 197
Index—Locorum 201

Contents | ix
x
xi

LIST OF TABLES

1.1 Aristotle’s Classification of Blood Types and the Natural Character

Traits They Produce (on the Basis of PA II 2 & 4) 19
1.2 Aristotle’s Scale of Perfection Based on Differences in Material
Natures (on the Basis of GA II 1 & 4) 24
2.1 Aristotle’s Ethnographical Account of Human Natural Character
(on the Basis of Pol VII 7) 46
6.1 The Four Human Character Profiles (on the Basis of PA II 2–​4,
Pol VII 7, & HA III 19) 156
xi
xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book took many years and the help of many people to complete. It is
my pleasure and honor to thank them here.
Let me start by acknowledging the two institutions that allowed me the
leisure to start and finish this project. First, I had the good fortune to spend
the 2010–​2011 academic year at the Harvard University Center for Hellenic
Studies in Washington, DC, as a residential junior fellow in Ancient Greek
Studies. I would like to thank the Board and Trustees for granting me
this opportunity and the wonderful fellows with whom I shared my time
there for providing such a stimulating, interdisciplinary, and collaborative
environment. Phil Horky deserves special thanks for always being willing
to talk philosophy and to discuss my ideas about Aristotle, and for offering
candid and concrete advise that has improved the book in more ways than
I can indicate here. Second, I enjoyed a fellowship at the Institute for the Arts
and Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the
spring of 2016, which allowed me to complete and revise the manuscript in
the company of a most wonderful and intellectually diverse group of fellows.
I would like to offer special thanks to Michele Berger for her leadership and
guidance throughout this semester.
The book has gone through many drafts and stages, and I owe many
thanks to all those who have participated in the discussion on the various
conferences, colloquia, and classrooms where this material was presented,
but especially to my distinguished colleagues David Reeve and Jim Lesher;
to Devin Henry, Jim Lennox, Brad Inwood, Emily Austin, and Kyle Driggers;
and to the readers at Oxford University Press (OUP) for their excellent
feedback and detailed criticisms on parts or wholes of the book, and for their
xvi

encouragement and support. I also note my gratitude to Peter Ohlin at OUP

for his patience and help on the manuscript.
The book is dedicated to my daughter, Elisabeth Madelief Laux: In mijn
ogen ben jij perfect en Aristoteles had het duidelijk mis. Je ben mijn grootste
trots en ik heb je lief met heel mijn hart.
Some of the materials of this book have been published elsewhere, and
I would like to thank the publishers and the editors for their permission
to reprint the revised versions here: ­chapters 1 and 2 grew out of a paper
published as “Aristotle on Natural Character and Its Implications for Moral
Development” in Journal of the History of Philosophy 50.4 (2012): 507–​530.
Chapter 4 is a revised and expanded version of “Becoming Good Starts with
Nature: Aristotle on the Moral Advantages and the Heritability of Good
Natural Character,” published in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 44
(2013): 99–​127. And the basis for c­ hapter 5 was published as “Perfection and
the Physiology of Habituation in Aristotle’s Ethics and Physics VII 3,” which is
­chapter 12 in Aristotle’s Physics: A Critical Guide, edited by Mariska Leunissen
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 225–​244.

xiv | Acknowledgments
xv

INTRODUCTION

H ow does one become a morally good or virtuous person? For Aristotle,

this question is of crucial importance because only in virtuous activity
can one live the kind of rich and rewarding life that he considers constitutive
of human flourishing or happiness (ἡ εὐδαιμονία). Traditionally, studies of
Aristotle’s views about moral development and his conception of character
(τὸ ἦθος) focus almost exclusively on his ethical works and on his description
of the acquisition of character virtue (ἡ ἠθικὴ ἀρετή) by the freeborn, well-​
raised male citizens.1 Much progress has thus been made in our understand-
ing of Aristotle’s ethics, but the elitism that is present in his ethical treatises
is usually ignored, and some even suggest that anyone can become virtuous
and happy through habituation, as long as one tries hard enough.2 This book
aims to counterbalance this tendency in the past and current scholarship on
Aristotle’s ethics by approaching the issue of character primarily from a bio-
logical perspective and by including from the outset Aristotle’s views about
natural character and its possibilities for moral development in nonhuman
animals, women, barbarians, and “natural slaves.”
Many of these latter views are recorded in the most morally repug-
nant, politically and psychologically antiquated, and therefore (sometimes
rightfully) neglected parts of the Aristotelian corpus. This neglect is of
course understandable, especially for those scholars who have wanted to

1
See, e.g., Annas 1993, Nussbaum 1986, and Sherman 1989.
2
In many cases, the debate focuses on how “humans” or “persons” should live and how they
can achieve happiness according to Aristotle, thereby glossing over the gendered and elitist
perspective that he offers. See most recently, for instance, the introduction in Polansky 2014b,
and Roche 2014 and Inglis 2014 in the same volume. Notable exceptions are Burnyeat 1980
(p. 81) and Hutchinson & Johnson 2014 (p. 385).
xvi

demonstrate Aristotle’s relevance for modern approaches to (virtue) ethics.

However, a full understanding of Aristotle’s ethics also requires an under-
standing of the natural challenges those people face, who, according to
Aristotle, are permanently excluded from the life of virtue and happiness,
and an understanding of why he believes that no amount of habituation can
help them overcome those natural challenges. This in turn helps shed light
on the mechanisms through which Aristotle thinks some men do become
virtuous and happy, and on why this kind of achievement is possible only for
a select few.3 In his biological works, Aristotle has a lot to say about “natural
character traits” in humans and nonhuman animals alike, and about their
relation to emotion and action as well as to external factors such as environ-
ment and diet that influence and possibly change these traits for the better or
the worse, temporarily or permanently. As I will argue in this book, Aristotle
considers the process of becoming virtuous as extremely difficult,4 because
even if the external circumstances and political organization and educational
systems are ideal, it still requires one to overcome many natural obstacles,
and he thinks that for most people, especially most women and barbarians,
those obstacles are simply too great. These morally unlucky groups can per-
haps acquire the “natural virtues” and participate in some form of living well,
which will offer some “sweetness” and well-​being to their lives, but can never
acquire full virtue and happiness.
In the ethical treatises, character is discussed mainly in its role as the
bearer of morality:5 it is a virtuous state (ἕξις) of character that disposes one
to perform actions that hit the mean and that are therefore praiseworthy.
Aristotle emphasizes that these states of character—​and not just actions—​
are “up to us and voluntary” (see, e.g., EN III 5, 1114a4–​31 and b28–​29: ἐφ’
ἡμῖν καὶ ἑκούσιοι). Provided that the freeborn men receive the appropriate

3
Aristotle characterizes his audience in the Nicomachean Ethics as young men who have been
raised well, are well educated, and are already motivated to become virtuous and who want
to make others virtuous as well, either as lawgivers or as heads of their households (see, e.g.,
EN I 3, 1094b27–​1095a8; EN I 13, 1102a7–​10; and EN X 9, 1179b7–​10; cf. Pol III 6, 1282a3–​7).
See also Hutchinson & Johnson 2014 (pp. 383–​389) and Schofield 2006 (p. 310): “The EN and
Politics alike are best interpreted as writings that are addressed not to individual in their pri-
vate capacities, but to someone who aspires to be a politician—​that is to say, a lawgiver.”
4
A point that Aristotle of course makes himself explicitly in EN II 9, 1109a24–​b1, but that has
not always been fully appreciated.
5
There is much debate about whether Aristotle’s excellences of character (and ancient ethi-
cal theories in general) are moral in a modern sense; see, e.g., Annas 1996, Irwin 1985, and
Williams 1985. For the purposes of this book, I am using the term “moral” to differentiate the
excellences of character Aristotle discusses in his ethical treatises from the character traits he
discusses in the biological treatises, which I refer to as “natural” character traits.

xvi | Introduction
xvi

moral education from childhood and are raised in a properly organized city,
they can shape their own character by performing right and just actions.
Character virtue as the unified psychological state that results from this kind
of habituation (for Aristotle, one cannot have one character virtue without
having them all as one single condition of the soul and without being practi-
cally wise at the same time)6 is stable across time and robust across situa-
tions and therefore reliably predicts and guides virtuous actions.7
By contrast, in his natural works, Aristotle treats character as one of the
four biological differentia by which animals differ from one another (the
other three being their ways of life, actions, and parts), and he defines it as
a natural capacity (φυσικὴ δύναμις) of the soul that predisposes an animal’s
(nonmoral) emotions, actions, and even “cognitive” acts related to survival
and procreation. Character in this biological context thus encompasses both
traits that are connected to nonrational desires and emotions, such as “cour-
age” and “jealousy,” and intellectual capacities, such as “prudence” or “crafti-
ness,” which for nonhuman animals are grounded in their perceptive soul
only. For instance, Aristotle characterizes the cuckoo as being both extremely
cowardly, because it allows itself to be pecked at even by little birds, and pru-
dent, because it realizes that it cannot protect its own offspring and therefore
lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.8 And while these natural charac-
ter traits reliably predict and guide all kinds of behaviors, Aristotle believes
that those traits themselves are highly causally dependent on the organism’s
physiological makeup; that is, on what Aristotle calls their “material nature,”
which includes the particular elemental mixture of their blood and their level
of vital heat. Because of this, these traits are easily changed—​both long term
and short term—​by efficient causes that are not all up to that organism, such
as climate, diet, aging, and disease. In addition, since the difference between
male and female is in an important way tied to differences of the more and

6
See EN VI 13, 1144b35–​1145a2; note that according to Aristotle the unity thesis holds only
for moral virtue or virtue in the strict sense, not for the natural virtues (which are habituated
stable dispositions not yet integrated with practical wisdom) or natural character traits (which
are capacities humans have by nature and from birth).
7
It is this globalist “personality” view of character, based almost exclusively on interpretations
of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, that has continued to inspire virtue ethicists and moral
psychologists to the present day, but which—​more recently—​also has attracted considerable
criticism for falsely assuming the existence of global personality traits and for underestimating
how much of our behavior is influenced by (uncontrollable) situational factors. For a situation-
ist critique of Aristotle’s concept of character as being psychologically implausible and empiri-
cally inadequate as an explanation for human action, see Doris 2002 (especially pp. 1–​27),
Merritt 2000 (pp. 365–​366), and Merritt et al. 2010 (pp. 356–​360).
8
See HA IX 29, 618a25–​30; cf. GA III 1, 750a13–​15.

Introduction | xvii
xvi

less in the material nature and vital heat of animals, character profiles tend
to be gendered too. When it comes to their character traits, women turn out
to be at a natural disadvantage: despite the fact that natural character is for
the most part highly changeable, Aristotle believes that the natural character
traits of women are simply “too far away on the road toward virtue” to be able
to reach their goal, and that their deliberative capacities are naturally lacking
in a way that makes the acquisition of practical wisdom and hence full moral
virtue impossible.
As a result, the gender and the natural character traits that one has from
birth, as well as the environment in which one grows up, the diet one follows,
the bodily exercises one performs, the paintings and music one is exposed to
throughout childhood, etc., all can contribute to or impede the acquisition of
virtue and in some cases even make it impossible. In other words, although
Aristotle never denies that the shaping of our moral character is “up to us”
or that character—​whether moral or natural—​guides actions, his biological
views indicate that natural character traits, given their physiological nature,9
are not robust but are changeable by various external factors, such as, impor-
tantly, climate and environment.10 Not all these factors are in our control, but
all of them have the capacity to push natural character traits either toward
or away from natural virtue and thereby make the path toward full moral
virtue easier or more difficult. This book, then, aims to document this malle-
ability of natural character and to show that factors such as gender, diet, cli-
mate, and health can have important ethical consequences, in particular with
regard to moral luck: Aristotle believes that only very few humans possess
the appropriate biological traits that make the transition to moral character
possible at all, which means that not all humans possess equal opportunities
for the development of virtue and hence for living a flourishing, happy life.

9
On my reading, Aristotle thus appears to be a predecessor of the view according to which
personality has a biological basis and that traces back personality traits to brain structures
and neural mechanisms (which somewhat parallel soul structures and blood properties in
Aristotle’s account). On this view, see especially Eysenck 1967, Gray 1982, and Canli 2006.
10
Although Aristotle’s version of “environmental determinism” is one of a kind, it is impor-
tant to realize that his views are much indebted to and influenced by the debates of his time
about the relation between the character of a given people and the influence of nature versus
convention in shaping this character. On this, see in particular the Hippocratic Airs, Waters,
Places (passim), Herodotus’s Histories (especially II 77, VII 101–​105, and IX.122), and Plato
(especially his Menexenus, Laws 747b–​e, Republic 434e–​436a, and Timaeus 24c–​d). I hope to
explore the relations between Aristotle’s views and those of his contemporaries elsewhere, but
see Sassi 2001 (pp. 82–​139) for the most current overview of ethnographical theories in the
ancient world, Jouanna 1999 (pp. 210–​232) on ethnography in the Hippocratics, Thomas 2000
(pp. 102–​134) on Herodotus, and Kamtekar 2002 on Plato.

xviii | Introduction
xi

Rather, habituation and moral education will be successful mostly for those
“lucky” freeborn men who are already naturally disposed toward the develop-
ment of virtue.
In working out Aristotle’s views about natural character and its role in
the moral development of citizens of the ideal city, women, barbarians, and
natural slaves, I will rely on the following four core assumptions for which
my book provides further support.
First, when Aristotle talks about character, he differentiates between natu-
ral character traits, which are, metaphysically speaking, “dualizing, rational
capacities” that can be developed into two directions—​that is, toward natural
virtue or vice—​by desire or wish;11 natural virtues, which are single dispo-
sitions resulting from the frequent actualizations of the individual natural
capacities in the direction of virtue;12 and moral virtue, a unified psychological
disposition involving full character virtue and practical wisdom that results
from successful habituation.13 Furthermore, and this is crucial for my discus-
sions in Part I of this book, for Aristotle, natural character traits are capaci-
ties that both humans and nonhuman animals possess. Aristotle argues in
the History of Animals (HA VIII 1, 588a18–​b3) that the personality traits such
as courage that animals have are similar to the personality traits of humans,
while making clear that their intellectual traits such as craftiness are merely
analogous to the ones humans have, since nonhuman animals do not possess
the soul capacity of reason. On the basis of this explicit comparison between
the character types of human and nonhuman animals found here and else-
where in the biological treatises,14 we can assume that whatever Aristotle says
about the natural character of animals is also relevant for his views about the
natural character traits of humans, and that there is thus no deep metaphysi-
cal distinction between humans and nonhuman animals.15

11
See Meta IX 2, 1046a36–​b7, and IX 5, 1047b35–​1048a5; I discuss the “metaphysics” of charac-
ter in more detail in ­chapter 5.3.
12
Cf. EN VI 13, 1144b4–​9, and perhaps EE III 7, 1234a24–​30: character traits tend by nature
toward natural virtue, which suggests that virtue is the per se realization of the natural capaci-
ties for character.
13
On the relation between “natural” and “moral” virtue, see Lennox 1999b.
14
And even sometimes in the ethical treatises: see, e.g., Aristotle’s claim in Pol VIII 4, 1338b17–​
19, that among barbarians and animals “we see that courage follows the wild, but even more
the tame and the ones with a lion-​like temper” as proof for the mistaken focus of the Spartans
on the military exercise of their children, suggesting that natural courage at least is instilled in
the same way among humans and nonhuman animals.
15
See also Lennox 1999b, pp. 11 and 16–​18.

Introduction | xix
x

It has sometimes been suggested that animals cannot truly experience

emotions because they are incapable of reasoning and belief, and that there-
fore Aristotle’s attribution of personality traits to animals (and not just their
intellectual traits) must be only by analogy or must be interpreted as meta-
phorical.16 While it is true that Aristotle provides a cognitive account of emo-
tion in the Topics and his Rhetoric,17 and while it is not easy to construe a
satisfactory account both of human and animal emotion solely on the basis
of their shared possession of the capacity of imagination,18 there is no rea-
son not to take Aristotle’s attribution and causal explanation of the character
traits of nonhuman animals in the biological treatises at face value. There are
no indications in the text suggesting that Aristotle perceives of his account of
emotion as involving a sharp distinction between human and animal emo-
tion such that this would also entail a sharp distinction (i.e., one that would
involve a distinction in kind rather than in a distinction of the more and the
less) among the kinds of personality traits they possess. I also reject inter-
pretations of Aristotle’s attribution of character traits of any type to animals
as mere metaphors, since these interpretations clash with Aristotle’s own
explicit scientific practice of appealing to them as causally relevant differen-
tia of animals in his biology.19
Second, my discussion of natural character throughout this book will
stress the importance of material natures and their relative causal indepen-
dence from teleological causation in the determination of what kind of natu-
ral character traits a given living being has. Famously, Aristotle argues that
natural processes that happen always or for the most part and that have regu-
lar good outcomes are due to natural teleology, which in living beings means
due to the goal-​directed actions of natures as internal principles of motion
and rest acting in accordance with form. These “formal natures” (which are

16
See especially Fortenbaugh 1975, pp. 9–​15 and 93–​103.
17
See, however, the important caveat presented in Cole 1992, 46n.6: “This use of the Rhetoric
as a key text [ for a cognitive theory of emotions] may be problematic, however, since by its very
subject this book has already delimited its terrain to applications of concepts in situations at
least potentially rhetorical; it would thus appear to have ruled out animal behavior from the
start. … We would expect that the way that emotions are treated in the Rhetoric would be heav-
ily weighted toward distinctively human ways of experiencing appeals to them, i.e., via cogni-
tive channels.”
18
This has been attempted in, for instance, Sorabji 1993 (pp. 55–​58) and Cooper 1999d
(pp. 416–​417).
19
I also follow Balme 1987 (pp. 16–​17) in attributing the authorship of HA VIII–​IX to Aristotle,
and not to Theophrastus, as early critics of these books of the HA have suggested: see, e.g.,
Dirlmeier 1937 (pp. 55–​60) and Fortenbaugh 1971 (p. 152).

xx | Introduction
xxi

identical to souls in living beings) conditionally necessitate the coming into

being of certain materials and structures and organize them in ways that are
beneficial and functional for the living being. Thus, for the most part, living
beings possess the features they have—​and have them in the particular loca-
tions where they are, for example—​for the sake of something. For instance,
birds are essentially flyers, and they possess wings for the sake of flying: the
formal natures of birds produce or “craft” wings, so to speak, for the sake
of realizing the function of flying. However, Aristotle also describes cases
in which materials come to be of material necessity and do not appear to
be conditionally necessitated for the sake of something, but in which they
are then used by these formal natures for the production of parts that are
beneficial to the animal in question. In these latter cases, functional features
emerge, as it were, from the potentials the “extra” materials happen to have.
The process is still teleological because it is the goal-​directed actions of the
formal natures that produce the useful parts, but the parts themselves are
not realizations of preexisting potential for forms, and their function is not
specified by the definition of the substantial being of the animal in ques-
tion. Rather, their use is in important ways “dictated by” the potentials of the
materials available: for instance, earthen residue has “defensive potentials”
according to Aristotle and therefore gets used by nature for the production
of defensive parts, such as horns and talons.20 In this book, I argue that
natural character, in a way, is more akin to features such as horns and talons
than to features such as wings. That is, although animals have a character
profile due to their form and soul (i.e., whether the living being in question
possesses “character” as one of its differentia is specified by the definition of
the substantial being of that living being, in the same way that this definition
specifies its mode of locomotion, such as flying), the species-​specific character
profile the animal ends up having is not specified by its form but instead is
due to its material nature (in the same way that horns have the defensive
potential they have in virtue of being constituted out of earthen material).
Animals thus have their species-​specific character profile not because that
character is part of their definition, but because that is the kind of character
profile that emerges by material-​efficient causation from the materials they
are constituted from: for example, thick, hot blood produces rashness; cold

20
See, e.g., PA II 9, 655b2–​12, and PA III 2, 663b25–​35. For the argument that in Aristotle’s
biology not all features are determined top-​down by the animal’s form, but that material neces-
sity can play an independent causal role in the formation of organic parts even in teleological
processes, see Leunissen 2010, especially pp. 76–​111.

Introduction | xxi
xxi

blood, cowardice. As Aristotle puts it, differences in the material makeup of

the animals’ blood produce differences in their character profiles.21
It has been suggested that although Aristotle explicitly uses “productive”
language characteristic of material-​efficient causation when describing the
relation between blood type and character profile in his biology, we should
not interpret this language causally. On this reading, when Aristotle says,
for instance, that thick and hot blood is productive of strength and rashness,
he is not presenting us with the material-​efficient causes of natural charac-
ter but instead identifies a correlation between the blood type and character
profile, while the “real” cause for why animals have the natural character
profile they have is their form. Thus, bulls are strong and rash because those
character traits are included in the definition of their substantial being, and
if there is any causal relation at all between these traits and their blood, it is
one of conditional necessity (i.e., bulls have thick and hot blood for the sake
of making them strong and rash, which are essential traits that need to be
realized). Note, however, that the few explanations Aristotle offers for why
animals have the natural character traits they have all associate those traits
with components of the material natures of those animals, and, in addition,
that for Aristotle “correlation implies causation”: if certain character traits
always go together with certain material natures, they must be causally con-
nected and cannot be the product of chance alone. They always go together
either because the forms of animals conditionally necessitate these mate-
rial natures for the sake of producing those particular character profiles, or
because these material natures produce these particular character profiles
by material necessity. There is no evidence in Aristotle’s corpus to suggest
that he believes the first option (not once does he explain character in terms
of the definition of an animal), while the most natural reading of Aristotle’s
discussions of character fits seamlessly—​or so I will argue—​with the sec-
ond option. Thus, Aristotle does not think that the cowardliness of cuck-
oos, for instance, is part of the definition of their substantial being or that
cuckoos have a cold material nature for the sake of being cowardly. Instead,
cuckoos have a cold material nature (one that is colder even relative to other
birds), and this relatively cold nature is evidenced through and is causally

21
See PA II 2 and II 4, passim, and especially PA II 4, 651a12–​17: “It is reasonable that of many
features the cause is the nature of the blood, both with respect to character among animals
and with respect to perception: for it is the matter of the entire body. For nourishment is mat-
ter, and blood is the last stage of nourishment. It therefore makes a great difference whether it
is hot or cold, thin or thick, turbid or pure.”

xxii | Introduction
xxi

responsible for their cowardliness.22 As a result, the actions and way of life of
the cuckoo are teleologically organized with a view to this cowardly character,
and not the other way around.23
Third, since natural character traits are the starting points of moral devel-
opment (from these the natural virtues develop through habituation and then
ultimately in the successful cases, once practical wisdom has been acquired
as well, full virtue arises as the perfection of human beings) and since these
natural character traits are causally connected to the species-​specific and
individual material nature of the humans in question (and therefore more
broadly also to their bodily conditions), the concept of habituation needs to
be understood more broadly than the one Aristotle develops in EN II 1–​6. In
these latter chapters, habituation is discussed mostly as a process of psycho-
logical change and improvement—​one that has perhaps physiological coun-
terparts, but one that is essentially and primarily a matter of forming correct
intentions and acquiring the right kind of dispositions and practical knowl-
edge by repeatedly performing virtuous actions. In contrast, the conception
of habituation presented in this book takes Aristotle’s account of habituation
in the Politics seriously, as involving both a rational and a nonrational com-
ponent and including practices such as eugenics, physical conditioning and
bodily exercises from childhood onward, and a training of moral perception
that requires one to listen to the right kind of music and receive the right
kinds of visual models. The acquisition of moral virtue emerges from this
analysis as a long and difficult process, requiring a person to make qualita-
tive changes both in soul and in body, in reason and in desires, and it is there-
fore best understood as a form of perfection as discussed in Physics VII 3.
Finally, on the assumption that Aristotle is a systematic philosopher,
I draw liberally from all his extant writings in order to present in this book
as complete a picture of the biological underpinnings of Aristotle’s ethics as
possible. In addition, I use his views about character in the natural treatises
to shed light on his views about character in the ethical treatises, and vice
versa. For Aristotle, political science and natural science are separate sci-
ences (the first is practical and concerned with action;24 the second is theoret-
ical and concerned with knowledge for its own sake25), and he considers both
of them as autonomous, in that both generate their own body of knowledge

22
PA II 2, 647b35–​648a11; PA II 4, 651a12–​17; GA III 1, 750a11–​13.
23
HA VIII 1, 588a17–​18; cf. also Pol I 8, 1256a19–​30.
24
EN II 2, 1103b26–​31, and II 4, 1105b12–​18; cf. EN VI 7, 1141b8–​9.
25
PA I 1, 639a12–​15; see also EN VI 7, 1141a28–​33, and VI 12; Meta VI 1 and XI 7.

Introduction | xxiii
xvi

through the use of their own, domain-​specific principles, which can be used
for demonstrations only within their own scientific domain or with regard
to a subordinated science (otherwise this would constitute a violation of
Aristotle’s rules against the transfer of principles or metabasis as presented
in the Posterior Analytics I 7). Given this clear distinction between the two sci-
ences, scholars of Aristotle sometimes assume that the ethical and political
treatises can or even should be studied independently from Aristotle’s other
scientific treatises, including his biological works. That is, even though it is
generally acknowledged that Aristotle’s political science was not developed
in a philosophical vacuum and that it therefore presupposes, among oth-
ers, a rudimentary familiarity with Aristotelian metaphysics (involving forms
and capacities that need to be realized) as well as with his natural science
(involving a theory of natural teleology and a psychology that divides the
soul into at least a rational and a nonrational part), some scholars believe
that neither Aristotle’s intended audience nor the modern reader needs any
specialized knowledge of Aristotle’s natural science in order to understand
his views about the human good or in order to become good oneself.26 This
book makes the case that this view is mistaken and that, instead, Aristotle
believes that at least some of the knowledge produced by natural science is
“foundational” for political science, in the sense that having knowledge of
the facts (to hoti) about human life and nature is an important prerequisite to
the political scientist’s task of perfecting or completing human nature so as
to make a person good.27 Aristotle claims that “art in some cases completes
what nature is unable to achieve, in other cases imitates it,”28 and in a sense
“political art” is no exception: it too completes human beings in a way that

26
See, e.g., Kraut 2010b, section 3.2: “Even though Aristotle’s ethical theory sometimes relies
on philosophical distinctions that are more fully developed in his other works, he never pro-
poses that students of ethics need to engage in a specialized study of the natural world, or
mathematics, or eternal and changing objects. His project is to make ethics an autonomous
field, and to show why a full understanding of what is good does not require expertise in
any other field.” In Barney 2008 (pp. 302–​303), about “biological” readings of the function
argument in EN I 7: “Such readings operate at an unsatisfying remove from the text of the
Ethics: this line of argument cannot be one that Aristotle expects his readers to extract from the
reasoning he presents. … Still, it seems fair to say that nothing at 1097b24ff., or earlier in the
Ethics, looks much like a cue to the reader to import wholesale the teleological framework of
Aristotelian natural science.” In Reeve 2014, p. xxxvi: “In the only really important sense, then,
politics has political facts as its sole foundations. Biology, metaphysics, and other bodies of
knowledge have no foundational role in politics whatsoever.”
27
For a more elaborate defense of this view, see Leunissen 2015a, pp. 214–​231. Cf. Aristotle’s
characterization of political science in EN X 9, 1181b15, as “philosophy concerning human mat-
ters”—​ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια φιλοσοφία.
28
Ph II 8, 199a15–​17; cf. Ph II 2, 194a21–​23.

xxiv | Introduction
xv

cannot be achieved by nature alone,29 but that also cannot be achieved by

going against human nature.
Characterizing natural science as foundational for political science in this
way entails that the theories that are produced by political science for the
sake of perfecting human nature have to be both informed by the relevant nat-
ural scientific facts about human nature in order to be maximally practically
successful and tested against the lives humans actually live in all its dimen-
sions, including, at the most basic level, those that pertain to survival and
reproduction, biological well-​being, and the fact that humans are political
animals.30 For instance, Plato’s idea to produce unity in the ideal city by mak-
ing all possessions—​including women and children—​common needs to be
rejected according to Aristotle because it conflicts with a basic fact about
human nature: humans have a natural love of the self, which “nature did not
give in vain” to them, and therefore a policy that rejects private possessions
should be rejected not because it is immoral, but because it is unnatural
for people to live that way, and therefore a city without private possessions
would not be successful at making its citizens happy.31 Similarly, Aristotle
argues that the happy life is self-​sufficient, but the kind of self-​sufficiency at
stake here—​that is, the concept of self-​sufficiency that can pass the above-​
mentioned test and therefore becomes part of Aristotle’s practical political or
ethical apparatus—​cannot be a solitary one. Humans are political animals,
and even if they could live by themselves they would not want to,32 and even

29
Pol VII 17, 1336b40–​1337a3; cf. EE VII 2, 1237a2–​3.
30
For this criterion, see EN X 8, 1179a16–​22: “The opinions of the wise, then, seem to harmo-
nize with our accounts. Such views therefore also possess some trustworthiness, but truth in
practical matters is judged on the basis of actions and life (τὸ δ’ ἀληθὲς ἐν τοῖς πρακτικοῖς ἐκ
τῶν ἔργων καὶ τοῦ βίου κρίνεται), for in them lies the deciding factor (ἐν τούτοις γὰρ τὸ κύριον).
We should therefore examine what has been said by applying it to [our] actions and life, and
if they harmonize with the actions we should accept it, and if they conflict [with our actions],
we should assume them to be [mere] words.” I take it that whatever facts or definitions or
principles concerning the human good a political scientist discovers, Aristotle believes that
they must always be evaluated for their truth for action and for the realization of the human good.
If they do not harmonize with our experience of human actions and life from which humans,
after all, reach their conception of happiness (EN I 5, 1095b14–​16), they ought to be rejected as
having no credibility and as being useless “with a view to life” (EN X 1, 1172a34–​b7; b6: πρὸς
τὸν βίον).
31
Pol II 5, 1263a38–​b3.
32
See EN I 7, 1097b6–​16: “The same result also becomes evident from a consideration of
self-​sufficiency. For the complete good seems to be self-​sufficient. But what we call (λέγομεν)
self-​sufficient is not [what is sufficient] for a single person by himself, living a solitary life, but
what also pertains to his parents and children and wife, and, in general, to his friends and
fellow-​citizens, since humankind is by nature political (ἐπειδὴ φύσει πολιτικὸν ὁ ἄνθρωπος). …
What is self-​sufficient we posit (τίθεμεν) to be that which makes all by itself a life choiceworthy

Introduction | xxv
xvi

the life of contemplation—​although it is the most self-​sufficient—​still cannot

be devoid of all the necessities of life.33 Natural scientific facts about human
nature thus do not restrain ethical and political theorizing itself, but they do
play a crucial role when it comes to deciding whether a theory is to be consid-
ered “mere words” or instead something that should be accepted as further-
ing the practical goal of making men “good and capable of fine deeds.” In
practice, this means that students of Aristotle’s political science need to be
well educated enough in natural science to be able to judge which biological
human attributes need to factor into their political theorizing and to deter-
mine how they need to be incorporated in order to keep their efforts on track
toward identifying (and subsequently building) the best cities for the sake of
producing human happiness.
The book consists of two parts. Part I offers, in three chapters, a com-
prehensive treatment of Aristotle’s conception of natural character as it
is developed in the biological treatises, and it shows how this conception
complements Aristotle’s treatment of moral character as familiar from the
ethical treatises. In particular, I discuss the role of natural character in moral
development as it comes up in the context of Aristotle’s advice to lawgivers
for building ideal cities and for selecting men with the best natural character
traits as the first generation of citizens.
Chapter 1 starts with Aristotle’s infamous ethnographical comment in
the Politics, in which he claims that the natural character traits a given tribe
of people has, and the kind of natural political organization this character
profile gives rise to, correlate with the environment and the region of the
then-​known world in which they live. The comment is followed by the prac-
tical advice to lawgivers who are in the process of creating their own ideal
city to select only those men as the future citizens whose natures are “well
mixed” and therefore “most easily led to virtue.” In the subsequent sections,
I turn to Aristotle’s discussions of natural character in the biological treatises
to show how the species-​specific character profile that a species of animals
has, including human animals, depends on the particular material mixture
of their blood, and that by “well mixed” Aristotle has in mind the kind of
mixture of blood that is hot, pure, and moist and that therefore gives rise to
natural courage and intelligence. I then explain how the various organs in

and lacking in nothing. Such we believe (οἰόμεθα) happiness to be.” Cf. also Pol III 6, 1278b19–​
21, and EE VII 10, 1242a19–​28.

33
See EN X 7, 1177a28–​29; EN X 8, 1178a25–​26; and EN X 8, 1178b33–​35: “Being a human, he
will also require external prosperity: for our nature is not self-​sufficient with regard to contem-
plation, but it is necessary that the body is healthy and that food and other care is available.”

xxvi | Introduction
xvi

the human body contribute to the production of blood that is according to

Aristotle of the highest quality of all animals.
Chapter 2 discusses the changeability of natural character under the
influence of factors such as diet and environment and thereby offers an
explanation for the individual differences of the more and the less within
a species-​specific character profile. That is, while ideally all humans are by
nature courageous and intelligent, and while all humans are more coura-
geous and intelligent than any other kind of animal, some humans are by
nature more courageous or intelligent than others, while others are more
cowardly and less intelligent, and these differences matter for the ease with
which one can acquire virtue. After identifying the material-​efficient causes
that produce these natural variations among the character profiles of people,
I discuss what this means for the moral development of certain “barbar-
ians” and “slavish people” living in different climatic regions of the world,
and I offer reasons against identifying all these latter groups as counting as
“natural slaves” for Aristotle.
Chapter 3 offers a brief but speculative suggestion for how Aristotle might
think lawgivers can identify future citizens with good natural character traits
in practice by turning to physiognomic passages in Aristotle. I argue that
while the Prior Analytics discusses only the logical and ontological condi-
tions that would make a science of physiognomy possible, and thus leaves
it in the middle whether Aristotle actually thinks such a science is possible
or is one he practices himself, his treatment of physiognomic signs in the
History of Animals as basic facts about the faces of animals provides evidence
for Aristotle’s own use and endorsement of physiognomy in a biological con-
text. There was a widespread practice among physicians and philosophers of
Aristotle’s time to appeal to physiognomy for diagnostic purposes, and it is
at least possible that Aristotle did too.
Part II discusses, also in three chapters, the psychophysical changes in
body and soul that one is required to undergo in the process of acquiring
moral virtues. My goal here is to show that Aristotle’s treatment of natu-
ral character in the biological treatises as presented in Part I provides the
conceptual and ideological foundation for his views about habituation as
developed in the ethical treatises, thus taking seriously Aristotle’s claim that
nature is one of the factors through which men become “good and capable
of fine deeds.”34

34
See Pol VII 13, 1332a38–​40: ἀλλὰ μὴν ἀγαθοί γε καὶ σπουδαῖοι γίγνονται διὰ τριῶν. τὰ τρία δὲ
ταῦτά ἐστι φύσις ἔθος λόγος. Cf. also EN X.9, 1179b20–​21; Pol VII 15, 1334b6–​28; and EE I 1,
1214a14–​25.

Introduction | xxvii
xxvii

Chapter 4 takes up Aristotle’s theory of eugenics, which encourages law-

givers not to leave the birth of offspring in their cities up to chance, but to put
policies in place that promote the birth of male offspring with the type of nat-
ural character traits that are most conducive to moral development. I argue
that the specific policies Aristotle recommends to these lawgivers take their
facts from his biological theories about reproduction and sexual differen-
tiation. I also discuss Aristotle’s conceptions of “good birth” and “natural
talent” that are mentioned outside his biological treatises but that he claims
can be acquired only through birth and that bring natural advantages to their
possessors in terms of acquiring virtue more easily.
According to Aristotle, habit—​and not nature—​is the most important
factor in the moral development of men, since it can override nature and
prepares the ground for moral education. Chapter 5, then, offers a psycho-
physical account of how habituation is supposed to change the bodies and
souls of men and make them virtuous by building on Aristotle’s discussion
of habituation as a form of perfection in Physics VII 3, which is the only
extended natural scientific treatment of the processes of habituation in the
corpus. Accordingly, I define character virtue as a proportionate, unified,
and stable relation that exists between the capacities that are constitutive of
the perceptive part of the soul and that have individually undergone qualita-
tive changes so that each is in the best condition possible and that are suit-
ably obedient to the rational part of the soul, which is practically wise. The
perfection that brings about this kind of psychological relation is very hard
to achieve because it involves the alteration of many psychological capaci-
ties, each of which requires its own particular kind of training from infancy
onward.
Finally, c­ hapter 6 tries to make sense of Aristotle’s exclusion of women
from full virtue and happiness by explaining—​to the extent to which this
is possible—​their moral deficiencies in light of their presumed biological
imperfections. I argue that, although formally identical to men (i.e., both
men and women share the same human species form and hence possess the
same human capacities), Aristotle believes that women, as a result of what
happens to them under the influence of material necessity during embryo-
genesis, are imperfect members of the human species due to their colder
material nature, which has repercussions for their ability—​not to perform
human functions as such, but to perform them well and therefore to acquire
virtue and to perfect their human nature in a moral sense. I show how the
particular natural character profile Aristotle attributes to women in the bio-
logical treatises, which can be explained in terms of their colder, earthier
material nature, can account for his claims in the Politics that women can

xxviii | Introduction
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
that the Pyramid of Cheops with all its measurements is to be found
contained in its minutest details in the structure of Solomon's
Temple; and having ascertained that the biblical names Shem, Ham
and Japhet are determinative

of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600-year period

of Noah and the 500-year period of Shem, Ham and Japhet; ...
the term “Sons of Elohim”and “Daughters” of H-Adam, [are]
for one thing astronomical terms,122

the author of the very curious work already mentioned—a book very
little known in Europe, we regret to say—seems to see nothing in his
discovery beyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the
Bible. He also arrives at most unexpected and extraordinary
conclusions, such as are very little warranted by the facts
discovered. His impression seems to be that because the Jewish
biblical names are all astronomical, therefore the Scriptures of all the
other nations can be “only this and nothing more.” But this is a great
mistake of the erudite and wonderfully acute author of The Source
of Measures, if he really thinks so. The “Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian
Mystery” unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic writings of
these two nations, and leaves those of other peoples untouched. His
idea is that the Kabalah “is only that sublime Science upon which
Masonry is based”; in fact he regards Masonry as the substance of
the Kabalah, and the latter as the “rational basis of the Hebrew text
of Holy Writ.” About this we will not argue with the author. But why
should all those who may have found in the Kabalah something
beyond “the sublime Science” upon which Masonry is alleged to have
been built, be held up to public contempt?

In its exclusiveness and one-sidedness such a conclusion is pregnant

with future misconceptions and is absolutely wrong. In its
uncharitable criticism it throws a slur upon the “Divine Science”
itself.
[pg 073]
The Kabalah is indeed “of the essence of Masonry,” but it is
dependent on Metrology only in one of its aspects, the less Esoteric,
as even Plato made no secret that the Deity was ever geometrising.
For the uninitiated, however learned and endowed with genius they
may be, the Kabalah, which treats only of “the garment of God,” or
the veil and cloak of truth,

is built from the ground upward with a practical application to

present uses.123

Or in other words represents an exact Science only on the terrestrial

plane. To the initiated, the Kabalistic Lord descends from the
primeval Race, generated spiritually from the “Mind-born Seven.”
Having reached the Earth the Divine Mathematics—a synonym for
Magic in his day, as we are told by Josephus—veiled her face. Hence
the most important secret yet yielded by her in our modern day is
the identity of the old Roman measures and the present British
measures, of the Hebrew-Egyptian cubit and the Masonic inch.124

The discovery is most wonderful, and has led to further and minor
unveilings of various riddles in reference to Symbology and biblical
names. It is thoroughly understood and proven, as shown by
Nachanides, that in the days of Moses the initial sentence in Genesis
was made to read B'rash ithbara Elohim, or “In the head-source [or
Mûlaprakiti—the Rootless Root] developed [or evolved] the Gods
[Elohim], the heavens and the earth;” whereas it is now, owing to
the Massora and theological cunning, transformed into B'rashith bara
Elohim, or, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth”—which word juggling alone has led to materialistic
anthropomorphism and dualism. How many more similar instances
may not be found in the Bible, the last and latest of the Occult works
of antiquity? There is no longer any doubt in the mind of the
Occultist, that, notwithstanding its form and outward meaning, the
Bible—as explained by the Zohar or Midrash, the Yetzirah (Book of
Creation) and the Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth (by Azariel Ben
Manachem of the XIIth century)—is part and parcel of the Secret
Doctrine of the Âryans, which explains in the same manner the
Vedas and all other allegorical books. The Zohar, in teaching that the
Impersonal One Cause manifests in the Universe through Its
Emanations, the Sephiroth—that Universe being in its [pg 074]
totality simply the veil woven from the Deity's own substance—is
undeniably the copy and faithful echo of the earliest Vedas. Taken by
itself, without the additional help of the Vaidic and of Brâhmanical
literature in general, the Bible will never yield the universal secrets of
Occult Nature. The cubits, inches, and measures of this physical
plane will never solve the problems of the world on the spiritual
plane—for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured. The working
out of these problems is reserved for the “mystics and the dreamers”
who alone are capable of accomplishing it.

Moses was an initiated priest, versed in all the mysteries and the
Occult knowledge of the Egyptian temples—hence thoroughly
acquainted with primitive Wisdom. It is in the latter that the
symbolical and astronomical meaning of that “Mystery of Mysteries,”
the Great Pyramid, has to be sought. And having been so familiar
with the geometrical secrets that lay concealed for long æons in her
strong bosom—the measurements and proportions of the Kosmos,
our little Earth included—what wonder that he should have made
use of his knowledge? The Esoterism of Egypt was that of the whole
world at one time. During the long ages of the Third Race it had
been the heirloom, in common, of the whole of mankind, received
from their Instructors, the “Sons of Light,” the primeval Seven. There
was a time also when the Wisdom-Religion was not symbolical, for it
became Esoteric only gradually, the change being necessitated by
misuse and by the Sorcery of the Atlanteans. For it was the “misuse”
only, and not the use, of the divine gift that led the men of the
Fourth Race to Black Magic and Sorcery, and finally to become
“forgetful of Wisdom”; while those of the Fifth Race, the inheritors of
the Rishis of the Tretâ Yuga, used their powers to atrophise such
gifts in mankind in general, and then, as the “Elect Root,” dispersed.
Those who escaped the “Great Flood” preserved only its memory,
and a belief founded on the knowledge of their direct fathers of one
remove, that such a Science existed, and was now jealously guarded
by the “Elect Root” exalted by Enoch. But there must again come a
time when man shall once more become what he was during the
second Yuga (age), when his probationary cycle shall be over and he
shall gradually become what he was—semi-corporeal and pure. Does
not Plato, the Initiate, tell us in the Phædrus all that man once was,
and that which he may yet again become:

Before man's spirit sank into sensuality and became embodied

through the loss [pg 075]of his wings, he lived among the
Gods in the airy spiritual world where everything is true and
pure.125

Elsewhere he speaks of the time when men did not perpetuate

themselves, but lived as pure spirits.

Let those men of Science who feel inclined to laugh at this,

themselves unravel the mystery of the origin of the first man.

Unwilling that his chosen people—chosen by him—should remain as

grossly idolatrous as the profane masses that surrounded them,
Moses utilised his knowledge of the cosmogonical mysteries of the
Pyramid, to build upon it the Genesiacal Cosmogony in symbols and
glyphs. This was more accessible to the minds of the hoi polloi than
the abstruse truths taught to the educated in the sanctuaries. He
invented nothing but the outward garb, added not one iota; but in
this he merely followed the example of older nations and Initiates. If
he clothed the grand truths revealed to him by his Hierophant under
the most ingenious imagery, he did it to meet the requirements of
the Israelites; that stiff-necked race would accept of no God unless
He were as anthropomorphic as those of the Olympus; and he
himself failed to foresee the times when highly educated statesmen
would be defending the husks of the fruit of wisdom that grew and
developed in him on Mount Sinai, when communing with his own
personal God—his divine Self. Moses understood the great danger of
delivering such truths to the selfish, for he understood the fable of
Prometheus and remembered the past. Hence, he veiled them from
the profanation of public gaze and gave them out allegorically. And
this is why his biographer says of him, that when he descended from
Sinai,

Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone ... and he put a
veil upon his face.126

And so he “put a veil” upon the face of his Pentateuch; and to such
an extent that, using orthodox chronology, only 3376 years after the
event people begin to acquire a conviction that it is “a veil indeed.” It
is not the face of God or even of a Jehovah shining through; not
even the face of Moses, but verily the faces of the later Rabbis.

No wonder if Clemens wrote in the Stromateis that:

Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment

are those of the Egyptians also.127

[pg 076]
Section VII. Old Wine in New Bottles.

It is more than likely, that the Protestants in the days of the

Reformation knew nothing of the true origin of Christianity, or, to be
more explicit and correct, of Latin Ecclesiasticism. Nor is it probable
that the Greek Church knew much of it, the separation between the
two having occurred at a time when, in the struggle for political
power the Latin Church was securing, at any cost, the alliance of the
highly educated, the ambitious and influential Pagans, while these
were willing to assume the outward appearance of the new worship,
provided they were themselves kept in power. There is no need to
remind the reader here of the details of that struggle, well-known to
every educated man. It is certain that the highly cultured Gnostics
and their leaders—such men as Saturnilus, an uncompromising
ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Menander and Cerinthus—
were not stigmatised by the (now) Latin Church because they were
heretics, nor because their tenets and practices were indeed “ob
turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem,” “monstrous,
revolting abominations,” as Baronius says of those of Carpocrates;
but simply because they knew too much of fact and truth. Kenneth
R. H. Mackenzie correctly remarks:

They were stigmatised by the later Roman Church because

they came into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity—
the possession of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome,
but which original continues in its docility towards the founder,
in the Primitive Orthodox Greek Church.128
Unwilling to accept the responsibility of gratuitous assumptions, the
writer deems it best to prove this inference by more than one
personal and defiant admission of an ardent Roman Catholic writer,
evidently entrusted with the delicate task by the Vatican. The
Marquis de Mirville [pg 077] makes desperate efforts to explain in
the Catholic interest certain remarkable discoveries in Archæology
and Palæography, though the Church is cleverly made to remain
outside of the quarrel and defence. This is undeniably shown by his
ponderous volumes addressed to the Academy of France between
1803 and 1865. Seizing the pretext of drawing the attention of the
materialistic “Immortals” to the “epidemic of Spiritualism,” the
invasion of Europe and America by a numberless host of Satanic
forces, he directs his efforts towards proving the same, by giving the
full Genealogies and the Theogony of the Christian and Pagan
Deities, and by drawing parallels between the two. All such
wonderful likenesses and identities are only “seeming and
superficial,” he assures the reader. Christian symbols, and even
characters, Christ, the Virgin, Angels and Saints, he tells them, were
all personated centuries beforehand by the fiends of hell, in order to
discredit eternal truth by their ungodly copies. By their knowledge of
futurity the devils anticipated events, having “discovered the secrets
of the Angels.” Heathen Deities, all the Sun-Gods named Soters—
Saviours—born of immaculate mothers and dying a violent death,
were only Ferouers129—as they were called by the Zoroastrians—the
demon-ante-dated copies (copies anticipées) of the Messiah to
come.

The danger of recognition of such facsimiles had indeed lately

become dangerously great. It had lingered threateningly in the air,
hanging like a sword of Damocles over the Church, since the days of
Voltaire, Dupuis and other writers on similar lines. The discoveries
[pg 078] of the Egyptologists, the finding of Assyrian and Babylonian
pre-Mosaic relics bearing the legend of Moses130 and especially the
many rationalistic works published in England, such as Supernatural
Religion made recognition unavoidable. Hence the appearance of
Protestant and Roman Catholic writers deputed to explain the
inexplicable; to reconcile the fact of Divine Revelation with the
mystery that the divine personages, rites, dogmas and symbols of
Christianity were so often identical with those of the several great
heathen religions. The former—the Protestant defenders—tried to
explain it, on the ground of “prophetic, precursory ideas”; the
Latinists, such as De Mirville, by inventing a double set of Angels and
Gods, the one divine and true, the other—the earlier—“copies ante-
dating the originals” and due to a clever plagiarism by the Evil One.
The Protestant stratagem is an old one, that of the Roman Catholics
is so old that it has been forgotten, and is as good as new. Dr.
Lundy's Monumental Christianity and A Miracle in Stone belong to
the first attempts. De Mirville's Pneumatologie to the second. In
India and China, every such effort on the part of the Scotch and
other missionaries ends in laughter, and does no harm; the plan
devised by the Jesuits is more serious. De Mirville's volumes are thus
very important, as they proceed from a source which has undeniably
the greatest learning of the age at its service, and this coupled with
all the craft and casuistry that the sons of Loyola can furnish. The
Marquis de Mirville was evidently helped by the acutest minds in the
service of Rome.

He begins by not only admitting the justice of every imputation and

charge made against the Latin Church as to the originality of her
dogmas, but by taking a seeming delight in anticipating such
charges; for he points to every dogma of Christianity as having
existed in Pagan rituals in Antiquity. The whole Pantheon of Heathen
Deities is passed in review by him, and each is shown to have had
some point of resemblance with the Trinitarian personages and Mary.
There is hardly a mystery, a dogma, or a rite in the Latin Church that
is not shown by the author as having been “parodied by the
Curvati”—the “Curved,” the Devils. All this being admitted and
explained, the Symbologists ought to be silenced. And so they would
be, if there were no materialistic critics to reject such omnipotency
of the Devil in this world. For, if Rome admits the likenesses, she
also claims the right of judgment between [pg 079] the true and the
false Avatâra, the real and the unreal God, between the original and
the copy—though the copy precedes the original by millenniums.

Our author proceeds to argue that whenever the missionaries try to

convert an idolater, they are invariably answered:

We had our Crucified before yours. What do you come to show

us?131 Again, what should we gain by denying the mysterious
side of this copy, under the plea that according to Weber all
the present Purânas are remade from older ones, since here
we have in the same order of personages a positive
precedence which no one would ever think of contesting.132

And the author instances Buddha, Krishna, Apollo, etc. Having

admitted all this he escapes the difficulty in this wise:

The Church Fathers, however, who recognized their own

property under all such sheep's clothing ... knowing by means
of the Gospel ... all the ruses of the pretended spirits of light;
the Fathers, we say, meditating upon the decisive words, “all
that ever came before me are robbers” (John, x. 8), did not
hesitate in recognizing the Occult agency at work, the general
and superhuman direction given beforehand to falsehood, the
universal attribute and environment of all these false Gods of
the nations; “omnes dii gentium dæmonia (elilim).”(Psalm
xcv.)133

With such a policy everything is made easy. There is not one glaring
resemblance, not one fully proven identity, that could not thus be
made away with. The above-quoted cruel, selfish, self-glorifying
words, placed by John in the mouth of Him who was meekness and
charity personified, could never have been pronounced by Jesus.
The Occultists reject the imputation indignantly, and are prepared to
defend the man as against the God, by showing whence come the
words plagiarised by the author of the Fourth Gospel. They are
taken bodily from the “Prophecies” in the Book of Enoch. The
evidence on this head of the learned biblical scholar, Archbishop
Laurence, and of the author of the Evolution of Christianity, who
edited the translation, may be brought forward to prove the fact. On
the last page of the Introduction to the Book of Enoch is found the
following passage:

The parable of the sheep rescued by the good Shepherd from

hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is obviously borrowed
by the fourth Evangelist from [pg 080] Enoch, lxxxix, in
which the author depicts the shepherds as killing and
destroying the sheep before the advent of their Lord, and thus
discloses the true meaning of that hitherto mysterious passage
in the Johannine parable—“All that ever came before me are
thieves and robbers”—language in which we now detect an
obvious reference to the allegorical shepherds of Enoch.

“Obvious” truly, and something else besides. For, if Jesus

pronounced the words in the sense attributed to him, then he must
have read the Book of Enoch—a purely Kabalistic, Occult work, and
he therefore recognised the worth and value of a treatise now
declared apocryphal by his Churches. Moreover, he could not have
been ignorant that these words belonged to the oldest ritual of
Initiation.134 And if he had not read it, and the sentence belongs to
John, or whoever wrote the Fourth Gospel, then what reliance can
be placed on the authenticity of other sayings and parables
attributed to the Christian Saviour?

Thus, De Mirville's illustration is an unfortunate one. Every other

proof brought by the Church to show the infernal character of the
ante-and-anti-Christian copyists may be as easily disposed of. This is
perhaps unfortunate, but it is a fact, nevertheless—Magna est veritas
et prevalebit.
The above is the answer of the Occultists to the two parties who
charge them incessantly, the one with “Superstition,” and the other
with “Sorcery.” To those of our Brothers who are Christians, and twit
us with the secresy imposed upon the Eastern Chelâs, adding
invariably that their own “Book of God” is “an open volume” for all
“to read, understand, and be saved,” we would reply by asking them
to study what we have just said in this Section, and then to refute it
—if they can. There are very few in our days who are still prepared
to assure their readers that the Bible had [pg 081] God for its
author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error
for its matter.

Could Locke be asked the question now, he would perhaps be

unwilling to repeat again that the Bible is

all pure, all sincere, nothing too much, nothing wanting.

The Bible, if it is not to be shown to be the very reverse of all this,

sadly needs an interpreter acquainted with the doctrines of the East,
as they are to be found in its secret volumes; nor is it safe now,
after Archbishop Laurence's translation of the Book of Enoch, to cite
Cowper and assure us that the Bible

... gives a light to every age,

It gives, but borrows none.

for it does borrow, and that very considerably; especially in the

opinion of those who, ignorant of its symbolical meaning and of the
universality of the truths underlying and concealed in it, are able to
judge only from its dead-letter appearance. It is a grand volume, a
master-piece composed of clever, ingenious fables containing great
verities; but it reveals the latter only to those who, like the Initiates,
have a key to its inner meaning; a tale sublime in its morality and
didactics truly—still a tale and an allegory; a repertory of invented
personages in its older Jewish portions, and of dark sayings and
parables in its later additions, and thus quite misleading to anyone
ignorant of its Esotericism. Moreover it is Astrolatry and Sabæan
worship, pure and simple, that is to be found in the Pentateuch
when it is read exoterically, and Archaic Science and Astronomy to a
most wonderful degree, when interpreted—Esoterically.

[pg 082]
Section VIII. The Book of Enoch the
Origin and the Foundation of Christianity.

While making a good deal of the Mercavah, the Jews, or rather their
synagogues, rejected the Book of Enoch, either because it was not
included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian
thought, it was

Disavowed by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of

Christ.135

But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would
have nothing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic
than a purely kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both
Latin and Protestant Churches class it among apocryphal
productions. Nevertheless the New Testament, especially in the Acts
and Epistles, teems with ideas and doctrines, now accepted and
established as dogmas by the infallible Roman and other Churches,
and even with whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch, or the
“pseudo-Enoch,” who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro-
Chaldaic, as asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the
Ethiopian text.

The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of The Evolution of

Christianity, who edited Bishop Laurence's translation, was
compelled to make some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On
internal evidence136 this book is found to have been written before
the Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does not
matter). As correctly argued by the Editor, it is
 Either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet,
predicting with miraculous accuracy the future teaching of
Jesus of Nazareth, or the Semitic romance [pg 083]from
which the latter borrowed His conceptions of the triumphant
return of the Son of man, to occupy a judicial throne in the
midst of rejoicing saints and trembling sinners, expectant of
everlasting happiness or eternal fire; and whether these
celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine, they have
exercised so vast an influence on the destinies of mankind for
nearly two thousand years that candid and impartial seekers
after religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the
relationship of the Book of Enoch with the revelation, or the
evolution, of Christianity.137

The Book of Enoch

Also records the supernatural control of the elements, through

the action of individual angels presiding over the winds, the
sea, hail, frost, dew, the lightning's flash, and reverberating
thunder. The names of the principal fallen angels are also
given, among whom we recognize some of the invisible powers
named in the incantations [magical] inscribed on the terra-
cotta cups of Hebrew-Chaldee conjurations.138

We also find on these cups the word “Halleluiah,” showing that

A word with which ancient Syro-Chaldæans conjured has

become, through the vicissitudes of language, the Shibboleth
of modern Revivalists.139

The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty-seven verses from various
parts of the Gospels and Acts, with parallel passages from the Book
of Enoch, and says:
 The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the
passage in the Epistle of Jude, because the author specifically
names the prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of
language and ideas in Enoch and the authors of the New
TestamentScripture, as disclosed in the parallel passages which
we have collated, clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic
Milton was the inexhaustible source from which Evangelists
and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names, borrowed
their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment, immortality,
perdition, and of the universal reign of righteousness, under
the eternal dominion of the Son of man. This evangelical
plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which adapts
the visions of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which
we miss the sublime simplicity of the great master of
apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of the
antediluvian patriarch.140

In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been

suggested, that the Book of Enoch in its present form is simply a
transcript—with numerous pre-Christian and post-Christian additions
and interpolations—from far older texts. Modern research went so
far as to point out that Enoch is made, in Chapter lxxi, to divide the
day and night into eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day
in the year as consisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, while
a day of sixteen [pg 084] hours in length could not have occurred in
Palestine. The translator, Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus:

The region in which the author lived must have been situated
not lower than forty-five degrees north latitude, where the
longest day is fifteen hours and a-half, nor higher perhaps than
forty-nine degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen
hours. This will bring the country where he wrote as high up at
least as the northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas
... the author of the Book of Enoch was perhaps a member of
 one of the tribes which Shalmaneser carried away, and placed
“in Halah and in Habor by the river Goshen, and in the cities of
the Medes.”141

Further on, it is confessed that:

It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority

of the Old Testamentto the Book of Enoch.... The Book of
Enoch teaches the preëxistence of the Son of man, the Elect
One, the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in
secret,142 and whose name was invoked in the presence of the
Lord of Spirits, before the sun and the signs were created.”
The author also refers to the “other Power who was upon
Earth over the water on that day”—an apparent reference to
the language of Genesis, i. 2.143 [We maintain that it applies
as well to the Hindu Nârâyana—the “mover on the waters.”]
We have thus the Lord of Spirits, the Elect One, and a third
Power, seemingly foreshadowing this Trinity [as much as the
Trimûrti] of futurity; but although Enoch's ideal Messiah
doubtless exercised an important influence on primitive
conceptions of the Divinity of the Son of man, we fail to
identify his obscure reference to another “Power” with the
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as
“angels of power”abound in the visions of Enoch.144

An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said “Power.” The Editor
concludes his remarkable reflections by adding:

Thus far we learn that the Book of Enoch was published before
the Christian Era by some great Unknown of Semitic [?] race,
who, believing himself to be inspired in a post-prophetic age,
borrowed the name of an antediluvian patriarch145to
authenticate his own enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic
 kingdom. And as the contents of his marvellous book enter
freely into the composition of the New Testament, it follows
that if the author was not an inspired prophet, who predicted
the teachings of Christianity, he was a visionary enthusiast
whose illusions were accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as
revelation—alternative conclusions which involve the Divine or
human origin of Christianity.146

[pg 085]
The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor:

The discovery that the language and ideas of alleged revelation

are found in a preëxistent work, accepted by Evangelists and
Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians
among apocryphal productions.147

This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of

the Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the Book of
Enoch.

The prophecies of the Book of Enoch are indeed prophetic, but they
were intended for, and cover the records of, the five Races out of the
seven—everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus
the remark made by the Editor of the English translation, that:

Chapter xcii. records a series of prophecies extending from

Enoch's own time to about one thousand years beyond the
present generation,148

is faulty. The prophecies extend to the end of our present Race, not
merely to a “thousand years” hence. Very true that:
 In the system of [Christian] chronology adopted, a day stands
[occasionally] for a hundred, and a week for seven hundred
years.149

But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system adopted by Christians to

make Biblical chronology fit with facts or theories, and does not
represent the original thought. The “days” stand for the
undetermined periods of the Side-Races, and the “weeks” for the
Sub-Races, the Root-Races being referred to by an expression that is
not even found in the English translation. Moreover the sentence at
the bottom of page 150:

Subsequently, in the fourth week ... the visions of the holy and
the righteous shall be seen, the order of generation after
generation shall take place,150

is quite wrong. It stands in the original: “the order of generation

after generation had taken place on the earth,” etc.; that is, after the
first human race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up
in the Third Root-Race; a change which entirely alters the meaning.
Then all that is given in the translation—as very likely also in the
Ethiopic text, since the copies have been sorely tampered with—as
about things which were to happen in the future, is, we are
informed, in the past tense in the original Chaldæan MSS., and is not
prophecy, but a narrative of what had already come to pass. When
Enoch begins “to speak from a book”151 he is reading the account
[pg 086] given by a great Seer, and the prophecies are not his own,
but are from the Seer. Enoch or Enoichion means “internal eye” or
Seer. Thus every Prophet and Adept may be called “Enoichion,”
without becoming a pseudo-Enoch. But here, the Seer who compiled
the present Book of Enoch is distinctly shown as reading out from a
book:
 I have been born the seventh in the first week [the seventh
branch, or Side-Race, of the first Sub-Race, after physical
generation had begun, namely, in the third Root-Race].... But
after me, in the second week [second Sub-Race] great
wickedness shall arise [arose, rather] and in that week the end
of the first shall take place, in which mankind shall be safe. But
when the first is completed iniquity shall grow up.152

As translated it has no sense. As it stands in the Esoteric text, it

simply means, that the First Root-Race shall come to an end during
the second Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race, in the period of which
time mankind will be safe; all this having no reference whatever to
the biblical Deluge. Verse 10th speaks of the sixth week [sixth Sub-
Race of the Third Root-Race] when

All those who are in it shall be darkened, the hearts of all of

them shall be forgetful of wisdom [the divine knowledge will be
dying out] and in it shall a man ascend.

This “man” is taken by the interpreters, for some mysterious reasons

of their own, to mean Nebuchadnezzar; he is in reality the first
Hierophant of the purely human Race (after the allegorical Fall into
generation) selected to perpetuate the dying Wisdom of the Devas
(Angels or Elohim). He is the first “Son of Man”—the mysterious
appellation given to the divine Initiates of the first human school of
the Mânushi (men), at the very close of the Third Root-Race. He is
also called the “Saviour,” as it was He, with the other Hierophants,
who saved the Elect and the Perfect from the geological
conflagration, leaving to perish in the cataclysm of the Close153 those
who forgot the primeval wisdom in sexual sensuality.

And during its completion [of the “sixth week,” or the sixth
Sub-Race] he shall burn the house of dominion [the half of the
 globe or the then inhabited continent] with fire, and all the
race of the elect root shall be dispersed.154

[pg 087]
The above applies to the Elect Initiates, and not at all to the Jews,
the supposed chosen people, or to the Babylonian captivity, as
interpreted by the Christian theologians. Considering that we find
Enoch, or his perpetuator, mentioning the execution of the “decree
upon sinners” in several different weeks,155 saying that “every work
of the ungodly shall disappear from the whole earth” during this
fourth time (the Fourth Race), it surely can hardly apply to the one
solitary Deluge of the Bible, still less to the Captivity.

It follows, therefore, that as the Book of Enoch covers the five Races
of the Manvantara, with a few allusions to the last two, it does not
contain “Biblical prophecies,” but simply facts taken out of the Secret
Books of the East. The editor, moreover, confesses that:

The preceding six verses, viz., 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th,
and 18th, are taken from between the 14th and 15th verses of
the nineteenth chapter, where they are to be found in the
MSS.156

By this arbitrary transposition, he has made confusion still more

confused. Yet he is quite right in saying that the doctrines of the
Gospels, and even of the Old Testament, have been taken bodily
from the Book of Enoch, for this is as evident as the sun in heaven.
The whole of the Pentateuch was adapted to fit in with the facts
given, and this accounts for the Hebrews refusing to give the book a
place in their Canon, just as the Christians have subsequently
refused to admit it among their canonical works. The fact that the
Apostle Jude and many of the Christian Fathers referred to it as a
revelation and a sacred volume, is, however, an excellent proof that
the early Christians accepted it; among these the most learned—as,
for instance, Clement of Alexandria—understood Christianity and its
doctrines in quite a different light from their modern successors, and
viewed Christ under an aspect that Occultists only can appreciate.
The early Nazarenes and Chrestians, as Justin Martyr calls them,
were the followers of Jesus, of the true Chrestos and Christos of
Initiation; whereas, the modern Christians, especially those of the
West, may be Papists, Greeks, Calvinists, or Lutherans, but can
hardly be called Christians, i.e., the followers of Jesus, the Christ.

Thus the Book of Enoch is entirely symbolical. It relates to the

history of the human Races and of their early relation to Theogony,
the symbols being interblended with astronomical and cosmic
mysteries. [pg 088] One chapter is missing, however, in the
Noachian records (from both the Paris and the Bodleian MSS.),
namely, Chapter lviii. in Sect. X; this could not be remodelled, and
therefore it had to disappear, disfigured fragments alone having
been left of it. The dream about the cows, the black, red and white
heifers, relates to the first Races, their division and disappearance.
Chapter lxxxviii, in which one of the four Angels “went to the white
cows and taught them a mystery,” after which, the mystery being
born “became a man,” refers to (a) the first group evolved of
primitive Âryans, and (b) to the “mystery of the Hermaphrodite” so
called, having reference to the birth of the first human Races as they
are now. The well-known rite in India, one that has survived in that
patriarchal country to this day, known as the passage, or rebirth
through the cow—a ceremony to which those of lower castes who
are desirous of becoming Brâhmans have to submit—has originated
in this mystery. Let any Eastern Occultist read with careful attention
the above-named chapter in the Book of Enoch, and he will find that
the “Lord of the Sheep,” in whom Christians and European Mystics
see Christ, is the Hierophant Victim whose name in Sanskrit we dare
not give. Again, that while the Western Churchmen see Egyptians
and Israelites in the “sheep and wolves,” all these animals relate in
truth to the trials of the Neophyte and the mysteries of initiation,
whether in India or Egypt, and to that most terrible penalty incurred
by the “wolves”—those who reveal indiscriminately that which is only
for the knowledge of the Elect and the “Perfect.”

The Christians who, thanks to later interpolations,157 have made out

in that chapter a triple prophecy relating to the Deluge, Moses and
Jesus, are mistaken, as in reality it bears directly on the punishment
and loss of Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion. The “Lord of the
sheep” is Karma and the “Head of the Hierophants” also, the
Supreme Initiator on earth. He says to Enoch, who implores him to
save the leaders of the sheep from being devoured by the beasts of
prey:

I will cause a recital to be made before me ... how many they

have [pg 089]delivered up to destruction, and ... what they
will do; whether they will act as I have commanded them or
not.

Of this, however, they shall be ignorant; neither shalt thou

make any explanation to them, neither shalt thou reprove
them; but there shall be an account of all the destruction done
by them in their respective seasons.158

... He looked in silence, rejoicing they were devoured,

swallowed up, and carried off, and leaving them in the power
of every beast for food....159

Those who labour under the impression that the Occultists of any
nation reject the Bible, in its original text and meaning, are wrong.
As well reject the Books of Thoth, the Chaldæan Kabalah or the
Book of Dzyan itself. Occultists only reject the one-sided
interpretations and the human element in the Bible, which is an
Occult, and therefore a sacred, volume as much as the others. And
terrible indeed is the punishment of all those who transgress the
permitted limits of secret revelations. From Prometheus to Jesus,
and from Him to the highest Adept as to the lowest disciple, every
revealer of mysteries has had to become a Chrestos, a “man of
sorrow” and a martyr. “Beware,” said one of the greatest Masters,
“of revealing the Mystery to those without”—to the profane, the
Sadducee and the unbeliever. All the great Hierophants in history are
shown ending their lives by violent deaths—Buddha,160 Pythagoras,
Zoroaster, most of the great Gnostics, the founders of their
respective schools; and in our own more modern epoch a number of
Fire-Philosophers, of Rosicrucians and Adepts. All of these are shown
—whether plainly or under the veil of allegory—as paying the penalty
for the revelations they had made. This may seem to the profane
reader only coincidence. [pg 090] To the Occultist, the death of
every “Master” is significant, and appears pregnant with meaning.
Where do we find in history that “Messenger” grand or humble, an
Initiate or a Neophyte, who, when he was made the bearer of some
hitherto concealed truth or truths, was not crucified and rent to
shreds by the “dogs” of envy, malice and ignorance? Such is the
terrible Occult law; and he who does not feel in himself the heart of
a lion to scorn the savage barking, and the soul of a dove to forgive
the poor ignorant fools, let him give up the Sacred Science. To
succeed, the Occultist must be fearless; he has to brave dangers,
dishonour and death, to be forgiving, and to be silent on that which
cannot be given. Those who have vainly laboured in that direction
must wait in these days—as the Book of Enoch teaches—“until the
evil-doers be consumed” and the power of the wicked annihilated. It
is not lawful for the Occultist to seek or even to thirst for revenge:
let him

Wait until sin pass away; for their [the sinners'] names shall be
blotted out of the holy books [the astral records], their seed
shall be destroyed and their spirits slain.161

Esoterically, Enoch is the “Son of man,” the first; and symbolically,

the first Sub-Race of the Fifth Root Race.162 And if his name yields
for purposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs the meaning of
the solar year, or 365, in conformity to the age assigned to him in
Genesis, it is because, being the seventh, he is, for Occult purposes,
the personified period of the two preceding Races with their fourteen
Sub-Races. Therefore, he is shown in the Book as the great
grandfather of Noah who, in his turn, is the personification of the
mankind of the Fifth, struggling with that of the Fourth Root-Race—
the great period of the revealed and profaned Mysteries, when the
“sons of God” coming down on Earth took for wives the daughters of
men, and taught them the secrets of the Angels; in other words,
when the “mind-born” men of the Third Race mixed themselves with
those of the Fourth, and the divine Science was gradually brought
down by men to Sorcery.

[pg 091]
Section IX. Hermetic and Kabalistic
Doctrines.

The cosmogony of Hermes is as veiled as the Mosaic system, only it

is upon its face far more in harmony with the doctrines of the Secret
Sciences and even of Modern Science. Says the thrice great
Trismegistus, “the hand that shaped the world out of formless pre-
existent matter is no hand”; to which Genesis is made to reply, “The
world was created out of nothing,” although the Kabalah denies such
a meaning in its opening sentences. The Kabalists have never, any
more than have the Indian Âryans, admitted such an absurdity. With
them, Fire, or Heat, and Motion163 were chiefly instrumental in the
formation of the world out of preëxisting Matter. The Parabrahman
and Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins are the prototypes of the En Suph
and Shekinah of the Kabalists. Aditi is the original of Sephira, and
the Prajâpatis are the elder brothers of the Sephiroth. The nebular
theory of Modern Science, with all its mysteries, is solved in the
cosmogony of the Archaic Doctrine; and the paradoxical though very
scientific enunciation, that “cooling causes contraction and
contraction causes heat; therefore cooling causes heat,” is shown as
the chief agency in the formation of the worlds, and especially of our
sun and solar system.

All this is contained within the small compass of Sepher Jetzirah in

its thirty-two wonderful Ways of Wisdom, signed “Jah Jehovah
Sabaoth,” for whomsoever has the key to its hidden meaning. As to
the dogmatic or theological interpretation of the first verses in
Genesis it is pertinently answered in the same book, where speaking
of the [pg 092] Three Mothers, Air, Water and Fire, the writer
describes them as a balance with

The good in one scale, the evil in the other, and the oscillating
tongue of the Balance between them.164

One of the secret names of the One Eternal and Ever-Present Deity,
was in every country the same, and it has preserved to this day a
phonetic likeness in the various languages. The Aum of the Hindus,
the sacred syllable, had become the Ἀιών with the Greeks, and the
Ævum with the Romans—the Pan or All. The “thirtieth way” is called
in the Sepher Jetzirah the “gathering understanding,” because

Thereby gather the celestial adepts judgments of the stars and

celestial signs, and their observations of the orbits are the
perfection of science.165

The thirty-second and last is called therein the “serving

understanding,” and it is so-called because it is

A disposer of all those that are serving in the work of the

Seven Planets, according to their Hosts.166

The “work” was Initiation, during which all the mysteries connected
with the “Seven Planets” were divulged, and also the mystery of the
“Sun-Initiate” with his seven radiances or beams cut off—the glory
and triumph of the anointed, the Christos; a mystery that makes
plain the rather puzzling expression of Clemens:

For we shall find that very many of the dogmas that are held
by such sects [of Barbarian and Hellenic Philosophy] as have
 not become utterly senseless, and are not cut out from the
order of nature [“by cutting off Christ,”167 or rather Chrestos]
... correspond in their origin and with the truth as a whole.168

In Isis Unveiled,169 the reader will find fuller information than can be
given here on the Zohar and its author, the great Kabalist, Simeon
Ben Jochai. It is said there that on account of his being known to be
in possession of the secret knowledge and of the Mercaba, which
insured the reception of the “Word,” his very life was endangered,
[pg 093] and he had to fly to the wilderness, where he lived in a
cave for twelve years surrounded by faithful disciples, and finally
died there amid signs and wonders.170 His teachings on the origin of
the Secret Doctrine, or, as he also calls it, the Secret Wisdom, are
the same as those found in the East, with the exception that in place
of the Chief of a Host of Planetary Spirits he puts “God,” saying that
this Wisdom was first taught by God himself to a certain number of
Elect Angels; whereas in the Eastern Doctrine the saying is different,
as will be seen.

Some synthetic and kabalistic studies on the sacred Book of Enoch

and the Taro (Rota) are before us. We quote from the MS. copy of a
Western Occultist, which is prefaced by these words:

There is but one Law, one Principle, one Agent, one Truth and
one Word. That which is above is analogically as that which is
below. All that which is, is the result of quantities and of
equilibriums.

The axiom of Éliphas Lévi and this triple epigraph show the identity
of thought between the East and the West with regard to the Secret
Science which, as the same MS. tells us, is:

The key of things concealed, the key of the sanctuary. This is

the Sacred Word which gives to the Adept the supreme reason
 of Occultism and its Mysteries. It is the Quintessence of
Philosophies and of Dogmas; it is the Alpha and Omega; it is
the Light, Life and Wisdom Universal.

The Taro of the sacred Book of Enoch, or Rota, is prefaced,

moreover, with this explanation:

The antiquity of this Book is lost in the night of time. It is of

Indian origin, and goes back to an epoch long before Moses....
It is written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of
fine gold and precious metals.... It is symbolical, and its
combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit.
Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless
preserved—thanks to the ignorance of the curious—in its types
and its most important primitive figures.

This is the Rota of Enoch, now called Taro of Enoch, to which De

Mirville alludes, as we saw, as the means used for “evil Magic,” the
[pg 094] “metallic plates [or leaves] escaped from destruction during
the Deluge” and which are attributed by him to Cain. They have
escaped the Deluge for the simple reason that this Flood was not
“Universal.” And it is said to be “of Indian origin,” because its origin
is with the Indian Âryans of the first Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-
Race, before the final destruction of the last stronghold of Atlantis.
But, if it originated with the forefathers of the primitive Hindus, it
was not in India that it was first used. Its origin is still more ancient
and must be traced beyond and into the Himaleh,171 the Snowy
Range. It was born in that mysterious locality which no one is able
to locate, and which is the despair of both Geographers and
Christian Theologians—the region in which the Brâhman places his
Kailâsa, the Mount Sumeru, and the Pârvatî Pamîr, transformed by
the Greeks into Paropamisus.
Round this locality, which still exists, the traditions of the Garden of
Eden were built. From these regions the Greeks obtained their
Parnassus172; and thence proceeded most of the biblical personages,
some of them in their day men, some demi-gods and heroes, some
—though very few—myths, the astronomical doubles of the former.
Abram was one of them—a Chaldæan Brâhman,173 says the legend,
transformed later, after he had repudiated his Gods and left his Ur
(pur, “town”?) in Chaldæa, into A-brahm174 (or A-braham) “no-
brâhman” who emigrated. Abram becoming the “father of many
nations” is thus explained. The student of Occultism has to bear in
mind that every God and hero in ancient Pantheons (that of the
Bible included), has three biographies in the narrative, so to say,
running parallel with each other and each connected with one of the
aspects of the hero—historical, astronomical and perfectly mythical,
the last serving to connect the other two together and smooth away
the asperities and discordancies in the narrative, and gathering into
one or more symbols the verities of the first two. Localities are made
to correspond with astronomical [pg 095] and even with psychic
events. History was thus made captive by ancient Mystery, to
become later on the great Sphynx of the nineteenth century. Only,
instead of devouring her too dull querists who will unriddle her
whether she acknowledges it or not, she is desecrated and mangled
by the modern Œdipus, before he forces her into the sea of
speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes. This has
now become self-evident, not only through the Secret Teachings,
parsimoniously as they may be given, but by earnest and learned
Symbologists and even Geometricians. The Key to the Hebrew
Egyptian Mystery, in which a learned Mason of Cincinnati, Mr.
Ralston Skinner, unveils the riddle of a God, with such ungodly ways
about him as the Biblical Jah-ve, is followed by the establishment of
a learned society under the presidentship of a gentleman from Ohio
and four vice-presidents, one of whom is Piazzi Smyth, the well-
known Astronomer and Egyptologist. The Director of the Royal
Observatory in Scotland and author of The Great Pyramid, Pharaonic
by name, Humanitarian by fact, its Marvels, Mysteries, and its
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

textbookfull.com