Section 12 (part 6)

The precept, therefore, admonishes us when we philosophize, and Proceed in the way pointed out, to fly from the snares of, and avoid all connection with, things corporeal and multifarious, but to become familiar with the essence of the incorporeal natures, which at all times are similar to themselves, through the truth and stability which they naturally contain. SYMBOL 22. Receive not a swallow into your house. Explanation .--This Symbol admonishes as follows: Do not admit to your dogmas a man who is indolent, who does not labour incessantly, and who is not a firm adherent to the Pythagorean sect, and endued with intelligence; for these dogmas require continued p. 87 and most strenuous attention. and an endurance of labour through the mutation and circumvolution of the various disciplines which they contain. But it uses the swallow as an image of indolence and an interruption of time, because this bird visits us for a certain part of the year, and for a short time becomes as it were our guest; but leaves us for the greater part of the year and is not seen by us. SYMBOL 23. Wear not a ring. Explanation .--We should understand this Symbol as an exhortation to the Pythagorean doctrine as follows: A ring embraces those that wear it after the manner of a bond; and a peculiarity of it is neither to pinch nor pain the wearer, but in a certain respect to be accommodated and adapted to him. But the body is a bond of this kind to the soul. The precept, therefore, Wear not a ring , is equivalent to, Philosophize truly, and separate your soul from its surrounding bond . For philosophy is the meditation of death and the separation of the soul from the body. Betake yourself, p. 88 therefore, with great earnestness to the Pythagorean philosophy, which through intellect separates itself from all corporeal natures, and is conversant through speculative disciplines with things intelligible and immaterial. Liberate yourself also from sin and from those occupations of the flesh which draw you aside from, and impede the philosophic energy; likewise from superabundant nourishment and unseasonable repletion, which confine the soul like a bond and incessantly introduce a crowd of diseases, and interruptions of leisure. SYMBOL 24. Inscribe not the image of God in a ring. Explanation .--This Symbol, conformably to the foregoing conception, employs the following exhortation: Philosophize, and before everything consider the gods as having an incorporeal subsistence. For this is the most principal root of the Pythagorean dogmas, from which nearly all of them are suspended, and by which they are strengthened even to the end. Do not, therefore, think that the gods use such forms as are corporeal, or that they are received by a p. 89 material subject and by body as a material bond, like other animals. But the engravings in rings exhibit the bond which subsists through the ring, its corporeal nature, and sensible form, and the view, as it were, of some partial animal which becomes apparent through the engraving; from which especially we should separate the genus of the gods as being eternal and intelligible, and always subsisting according to the same and in a similar manner, as we have particularly, most fully, and scientifically shown in our discourse concerning the gods. 1 SYMBOL 25. Behold not yourself in a mirror by the light of a lamp. Explanation .--This Symbol advises us in a more Pythagorean manner to philosophize, not betaking ourselves to the imaginations belonging to the senses, which produce indeed a certain light about our apprehensions of things; but this light resembles that of a lamp, and is neither natural nor true.