Plotino - Tratado 28,41 (IV, 4, 41) — As orações. Simpatia.

41. Pueden explicarse los efectos de la súplica por la simpatía de unas partes con otras, al igual que en una cuerda tendida la vibración que viene de abajo se propaga en seguida hasta lo alto. E incluso, con mucha frecuencia, cuando una cuerda (de la lira) vibra, otra siente esta misma vibración por su ajuste a un acuerdo y a una armonía única. Aun llevando las vibraciones de una lira a otra, puede observarse esta simpatía.

También en el universo se da una armonía, aunque en ella intervengan los contrarios. Porque esa armonía está hecha de partes semejantes y afines, pero igualmente de partes contrarias. Todo lo que sirve de ultraje para los hombres, como por ejemplo la cólera atraída hacia el hígado con la bilis, no se ha hecho con este fin. Igual ocurre si alguien, al tomar fuego de una hoguera, daña a otro ser sin proponérselo; es claro que el causante es quien ha tomado el fuego y a él, que ha llevado el fuego de un lugar a otro, ha de atribuirse esa acción. Pero esto sucede así porque el ser al que se ha transferido el fuego no es capaz de recibirlo.

XLI. Ni le Soleil, ni aucun astre en général n’entend les vœux qu’on lui adresse. S’il les exauce, c’est par la sympathie que chaque partie de l’univers a pour les autres, comme, si l’on touche une partie d’une corde tendue, on ébranle toutes les autres, ou bien encore comme, si l’on fait vibrer une des cordes d’une lyre, toutes les autres vibrent à l’unisson, parce qu’elles appartiennent toutes à un même système d’harmonie (125). Si la sympathie va jusqu’à faire répondre une lyre aux accords d’une autre, à plus forte raison doit-elle être la loi de l’univers, où règne une seule harmonie, quoique son ensemble comprenne des contraires, aussi bien que des parties semblables et analogues. Les choses qui nuisent aux hommes comme la colère qui, avec la bile, se rapporte à l’organe du foie, n’ont pas été faites pour nuire aux hommes. C’est comme si une personne en blessait une autre par mégarde en prenant du feu à un foyer : elle est sans doute l’auteur de la blessure parce qu’elle fait passer du feu d’une chose dans une autre; mais la blessure n’a lieu que parce que le feu ne peut être contenu par l’être auquel il est transmis(126).

HOW PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED.

41. Neither the sun, nor any other star hears the prayers addressed to it. If they are granted, it is only by the sympathy felt by each part of the universe for every other; just as all parts of a cord are caused to vibrate by excitation of any one part; or, just as causing one string of a lyre to vibrate would cause all the others to vibrate in unison, because they all belong to the same system of harmony. If sympathy can go as far as making one lyre respond to the harmonies of another, so much the more must this sympathy be the law of the universe, where reigns one single harmony, although its register contains contraries, as well as similar and analogous parts. The things which harm men, like anger, which, together with the bile, relate to the liver, were not created for the purpose of harming men. It is as if a person, in the act of taking fire from a hearth accidentally wounded another. This person is doubtless the author of the wound because he transferred the fire from one place to another; but the wound occurred only because the fire could not be contained by the being to whom it had been transmitted.

41. The prayer is answered by the mere fact that part and other part are wrought to one tone like a musical string which, plucked at one end, vibrates at the other also. Often, too, the sounding of one string awakens what might pass for a perception in another, the result of their being in harmony and tuned to one musical scale; now, if the vibration in a lyre affects another by virtue of the sympathy existing between them, then certainly in the All - even though it is constituted in contraries - there must be one melodic system; for it contains its unisons as well, and its entire content, even to those contraries, is a kinship.

Thus, too, whatever is hurtful to man - the passionate spirit, for example, drawn by the medium of the gall into the principle seated in the liver - comes with no intention of hurt; it is simply as one transferring fire to another might innocently burn him: no doubt, since he actually set the other on fire he is a cause, but only as the attacking fire itself is a cause, that is by the merely accidental fact that the person to whom the fire was being brought blundered in taking it.