[88] This too we must not fail to know, that wisdom which is the art of arts seems to change with its different subject matters, yet shews its true form unchanged to those who have clearness of vision and are not misled by the dense and heavy wrappings which envelop its true substance, but descry the form impressed by the art itself.
[89] They say that the great sculptor Pheidias would take brass and ivory and gold and various other materials to make his statues, and yet on all these he so stamped the impress of one and the same art, that not only adepts, but those who were totally ignorant of such matters, recognized the artist from his work.
[90] For as nature so often in the case of twins by using the same stamp shapes likenesses which are almost identical, so too that perfect art, which is the copy and effigies of nature, may take different materials and yet mould them and impress on them all the same form, and this it is which chiefly makes the products of its work to be as kinsfolk, brothers, twins to each other.
[91] We shall find the same thing happening with the power which resides in the Sage. Under the name of piety and holiness it deals with the attributes of the Really Existent; under that of nature-study, with all that concerns the heavens and the heavenly bodies; as meteorology, with the air and the consequences which result through its changes and variations both at the main seasons of the year and those particular ones which follow cycles of months and days; as ethic, with what tends to the improvement of human conduct, and this last takes various forms; politic, dealing with the state; economic, with the management of a house; sympotic, or the art of conviviality, with banquets and festivities; and further we have the kingly faculty dealing with the control of men, and the legislative with commands and prohibitions.
[92] All these—piety, holiness, nature-study, meteorology, ethic, politic, economic, king-craft, legislator-craft and many other powers—find their home in him who is in the truest sense many-voiced and many-named, even the Sage, and in all he will be seen to have one and the same form.