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366 BOOK OF THE A. AND A. RITE.
shadow and the light ; they compared winter with
spring, old age with youth, life with death, and said
" The first cause is beneficent and cruel. It gives
life and destroys."
" Are there, then, two contrary principles—a good
and an evil ?" cried the disciples of Manes.
No ! the two principles of the universal equilibrium
are not contrary to each other, though in apparent
opposition ; for it is a single wisdom that opposes
them one to the other.
The good is on the right, the evil on the left ;
:
but
the supreme good is above both, and makes the evil
subserve the triumph of the good, and the good
serve for the reparation of the evil.
Wherefore this first cause has always revealed
itself by the cross ;—the cross, that one composed of
two, each of the two divided, so that they constitute
four ;—the cross, that key of the mysteries of India
and Egypt, the tau of the patriarchs, the divine
symbol of Osiris, the stauros of the Gnostics, the
keystone of the Temple, the symbol of occult Ma-
sonry ;— the cross, that central point of junction of
the right angles of four infinite triangles ; the four*
in-one cf the divine tetragram.