every several configuration within the Circuit must be accompanied by a change in the position and condition of things subordinate to it, which thus by their varied rhythmic movement make up one total dance-play.
In our dance-plays there are outside elements contributing to the total effect- fluting, singing, and other linked accessories-and each of these changes in each new movement: there is no need to dwell on these; their significance is obvious.But besides this there is the fact that the limbs of the dancer cannot possibly keep the same positions in every figure; they adapt themselves to the plan, bending as it dictates, one lowered, another raised, one active, another resting as the set pattern changes.The dancer's mind is on his own purpose; his limbs are submissive to the dance-movement which they accomplish to the end, so that the connoisseur can explain that this or that figure is the motive for the lifting, bending, concealment, effacing, of the various members of the body;and in all this the executant does not choose the particular motions for their own sake; the whole play of the entire person dictates the necessary position to each limb and member as it serves to the plan.
Now this is the mode in which the heavenly beings [the diviner members of the All] must be held to be causes wherever they have any action, and, when.they do not act, to indicate.
Or, a better statement: the entire kosmos puts its entire life into act, moving its major members with its own action and unceasingly setting them in new positions; by the relations thus established, of these members to each other and to the whole, and by the different figures they make together, the minor members in turn are brought under the system as in the movements of some one living being, so that they vary according to the relations, positions, configurations: the beings thus co-ordinated are not the causes; the cause is the coordinating All; at the same time it is not to be thought of as seeking to do one thing and actually doing another, for there is nothing external to it since it is the cause by actually being all: on the one side the configurations, on the other the inevitable effects of those configurations upon a living being moving as a unit and, again, upon a living being [an All] thus by its nature conjoined and concomitant and, of necessity, at once subject and object to its own activities.
34.For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part retain their personality, and are thus less absolutely at beck and call, as not being slaves, not utterly chattels.
The changing configurations within the All could not fail to be produced as they are, since the moving bodies are not of equal speed.
Now the movement is guided by a Reason-Principle; the relations of the living whole are altered in consequence; here in our own realm all that happens reacts in sympathy to the events of that higher sphere:
it becomes, therefore, advisable to ask whether we are to think of this realm as following upon the higher by agreement, or to attribute to the configurations the powers underlying the events, and whether such powers would be vested in the configurations simply or in the relations of the particular items.
It will be said that one position of one given thing has by no means an identical effect- whether of indication or of causation- in its relation to another and still less to any group of others, since each several being seems to have a natural tendency [or receptivity]
of its own.
The truth is that the configuration of any given group means merely the relationship of the several parts, and, changing the members, the relationship remains the same.
But, this being so, the power will belong, not to the positions but to the beings holding those positions?
To both taken together.For as things change their relations, and as any one thing changes place, there is a change of power.
But what power? That of causation or of indication?
To this double thing- the particular configuration of particular beings- there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication.Thus we are obliged to attribute powers both to the configuration and to the beings entering into them.In mime dancers each of the hands has its own power, and so with all the limbs; the relative positions have much power; and, for a third power, there is that of the accessories and concomitants; underlying the action of the performers' limbs, there are such items as the clutched fingers and the muscles and veins following suit.
35.But we must give some explanation of these powers.The matter requires a more definite handling.How can there be a difference of power between one triangular configuration and another?
How can there be the exercise of power from man to man; under what law, and within what limits?
The difficulty is that we are unable to attribute causation either to the bodies of the heavenly beings or to their wills: their bodies are excluded because the product transcends the causative power of body, their will because it would be unseemly to suppose divine beings to produce unseemliness.
Let us keep in mind what we have laid down:
The being we are considering is a living unity and, therefore, necessarily self-sympathetic: it is under a law of reason, and therefore the unfolding process of its life must be self-accordant:
that life has no haphazard, but knows only harmony and ordinance:
all the groupings follow reason: all single beings within it, all the members of this living whole in their choral dance are under a rule of Number.
