"The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he
enters, with his "Know Thyself", which is at least as good
as "Hail". We answer the God back with "EI" (Thou
Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie
in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of Being...
The opposite principle which we find in the universe, whatever its
origin, is that which binds beings together and prevails over the
corporeal weakness tending to destruction.
To
my thinking the word "EI" is
confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that Thou
Art, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such
things belong to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over
Nature in its perishing and becoming, whether to effect either process
or to undergo it. This appears from the names, in themselves opposite
and contradictory. He is called Apollo, another is called Pluto;
he is Delius (apparent), the other Aidoneus (invisible); he is Phoebus
(bright), the other Skotios (full of darkness); by his side are the
Muses, and Memory, with the other are Oblivion and Silence; he is
Theorius and Phanæus, the other is "King of dim Night
and ineffectual Sleep."
"Select
Essays of Plutarch" (translater: A.O.
Prickard, 1918)
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