Divine Justice Transcends Time and Space
The notion of justice presupposes the persistence of identity, not only of individual, but also of family, race and nation. An individual goes through many changes, from a newborn baby, to a child, an adult and an old man. How can one be responsible for his past action if he is not the same person who committed it? Although a family, race or nation changes over time and space, it is accountable for the deeds of its ancestors.
We are more apt to wonder at distances of time than those of space. And yet there is more reason to wonder, that Athens should be infected with an epidemic contagion taking its rise in Ethiopia, than that, upon the impiety of the Delphians and Sybarites, delayed vengeance should at length overtake their posterity. For these hidden powers and properties have their sacred connections and correspondences between their utmost endings and their first beginnings; of which although the causes be unknown to us, yet silently they bring to pass their proper effects.
A general who executes one man in ten inspires his whole army with respect. Similarly, certain dispositions, afflictions, and corrections are transmitted to one soul through another, and more readily than through the body. For when the transmission is through the body, the same affection and change must take place in both parts; whereas imagination guides the soul to feel assurance or terror, for better or worse.
On Fate
Plato has indicated fate as an activity in (a) Phaedrus 248c, “This is the ordinance of Adrasteia [Destiny], if a soul have accompanied a god and beheld aught of reality, it shall suffer nought until the next revolution, and if able to do so ever, it shall ever go unscathed”; (b) Timaeus 41a, God “showed them the nature of the Universe, and declared unto them the laws of destiny”; (c) Republic 617d, “the word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity”. To summarize, fate is a divine law conforming to the nature of the universe and determining the course of everything that comes to pass. It determines the linking of future events to events past and present, from which there is no escape.
In terms of Aristotelian categories, the law of a state promulgates its commands as consequents of hypotheses1, and embraces all the concerns of a state in the form of universal statements. It does not lay down the law for individual, but speaks primarily of the general case, and only secondarily of the individual; The law of nature, while dealing with universals primarily, deals secondarily with particulars. The latter too are all fated after a fashion, since they are co-fated with the former. The determinate, which is appropriate to divine wisdom, is in the universal, while the unlimited is in the particular.
Fate as a substance appears to be the entire soul of the universe in all three of its subdivisions, the fixed, wandering, and the third portion below the heavens in the region of the earth, called Clotho, Atropos, and Lachesis respectively. Lachesis is receptive to the celestial activities of her sisters, and combines and transmits them to the terrestrial regions subject to her authority.
Illumination of Thought
If the body is moved with little trouble by a notion that enters the understanding without the help of spoken language, the understanding may be guided by a higher understanding and a diviner soul, that lays hold of it from without by a touch. Thus thought impinges on thought, just as light produces a reflection. For our recognition of one another’s thoughts through the medium of the spoken word is like groping in the dark; whereas the thoughts of daemons are luminous and shed their light on the daemonic man. Their thoughts have no need of words, which are symbols, viz. counterfeits and likenesses of what is present in thought.
Even so the phenomenon of speech serves in a way to allay the doubts of the incredulous. For on receiving the impression of articulate sounds, the air is fully changed to language and speech and conveys the thought to the soul of the hearer; with its ready susceptibility, the air should also be transformed by the mere ideas of higher beings and thereby indicate to divine and exceptional men the meaning of him who conceived the idea.
Notes:
- 1. Hypothesis has the literal sense of “putting under” and “subjoining”.
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