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676 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Pythagoreans to be the author of all sublunary things. The four points at the
base of the Pythagorean triangle correspond with a solid or cube, which combines
the principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no solid can have less than
four extreme boundary points.*
It is argued that "the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible
unit short of the annihilation of the idea with its subject." This is an
error, as the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before
them, although there is a special training needed for the conception,
and although the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are
such things as '' Meta-mat/ie77iatics" and '' Meta-geomeiryr Even Mathematics
pure and simple proceed from the universal to the particular,
from the mathematical indivisible point to solid figures. The teaching
originated in India, and was taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who,
throwing a veil over the Circle and the Point—which no living man
can define except as incomprehensible abstractions—laid
the origin of
the differentiated cosmic Matter in the base of the Triangle. Thus the
latter became the earliest of geometrical figures. The author of New
Aspects of Life, dealing with the Kabalistic Mysteries, objects to the
objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean conception and the
use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a "misnomer." His argument
that a solid equilateral body
One whose base, as well as each of its sides, form equal triangles—must have
four co-equal sides or surfaces, while a triangular plane will as necessarily possess
five,t
—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in
all its Esoteric application to the idea of the pregencsis, and the genesis
of Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical,
imaginary lines.
Can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the mind to which, if sides
be imputed, these must be the sides of the object it constructively represents. J
But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than
"phantoms of the mind" ; they are unverifiable, except on inference,
and have been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore,
the ideal Triangle— "as the abstract idea of a triangular body,
and, therefore, as the type of an abstract idea"—accomplished and
carried out to perfection the double symbolism intended. As an
emblem applicable to the objective idea, the simple triangle became a
solid. When repeated in stone, facing the four cardinal points, it
* Pythagorean Triangle, by the Rev. G. Oliver, pp. 18, 19. t P. 387. t P. 387.