Pernety - A Treatise On The Great Art.pdf - cyjack.com

The Great Art page 48Light is the principle of life, and shadow of death. The souls of the Mixts are rays of Light, andtheir bodies are abysses of shadows. Everything lives by Light, and everything which dies is deprivedof it. It is because of this principle, to which we pay so little attention, that we say commonly of adead man, il a perdu la lumière, (he has lost the light); and as Saint John says, “Light is the life ofmen,” (Evang., ch. I.).Each composite has faculties which are peculiar to it. As far as animals are concerned, we need onlyto reflect upon their actions to be convinced of this. The time of mating, which is so well known tothem, the just distribution of parts in the progeny; the use which they make of each member; theattention and care which they give to the nourishment and defense of their young; their differentaffections, of pleasure, of fear, of good will toward their masters, their disposition to receiveinstructions, their skill in procuring the necessaries of life, their prudence in shunning that whichcould injure them, and many other things which an observer may notice, prove that their soul isendowed with a kind of reasoning.Vegetables have also a mental faculty, and a method of knowing and foreseeing. The vital facultiesare with them the care of producing their like, the multiplicative, nutritive, augmentative, sensitiveand other virtues. Their idea is manifested in the presage of the weather, and the knowledge of thetemperature which is favourable to them to germinate and shoot forth their stalks; their strictobservation of climatic changes, as laws of Nature, in the choice of the aspect of the heavens which issuitable for them; in the manner of burying their roots; of elevating their stalks; of extending theirbranches; of developing their leaves; of forming and coloring their fruits; of transmuting the elementsinto food; of infusing into their germs a prolific virtue.Why do certain plants grow only in certain seasons, although one sows them as soon as they aremature, or they are sown by the natural fall of their grains? They have their vegetative principle, andyet they will develop it only at certain times, unless art furnishes them that which they would find inthe season suitable for them. Why does a plant sown in bad ground, adjacent to good soil, why does itdirect its roots to the side of the latter? What teaches an onion placed in the earth, germ downwards,to direct it towards the air? Why do ivy and other plants of the same species, direct their feeblebranches towards trees which can sustain them? Why does the pumpkin push its fruit with all itsstrength towards a vase of water placed near it? What is it that teaches plants, in which one remarksthe two sexes, to place themselves always the male near the female, and often very much inclinedtowards each other? Let us confess that all this passes our understanding; that Nature is not blind andthat she is governed by Wisdom.Of the Generation and Corruption of the MixtsEverything returns to its principle. Each individual exists in potentiality in the material world beforeappearing in its individual form, and will return in its time and in its order to the point whence it hasdeparted, as the rivers in the sea, to be born again in their turn, (Eccles., ch. I. V. 5). It is perhaps thusthat Pythagoras understood his metempsychosis which has not been comprehended.When the Mixt is dissolved, because of the weakness of the corruptible elements which compose it,the ethereal part abandons it, and returns to its native country. Then derangement, disorder andconfusion take place in the parts of the corpse, because of the absence of that which preserved orderin it. Death, corruption, take possession of it, until this matter receives anew celestial influences,which reuniting the scattered Elements, will render them suitable for a new generation.This vivifying spirit does not separate from matter during generative putrefaction, because it is notan entire and perfect corruption, as that which produces the destruction of the Mixt. It is a corruption