Miscellanies 1.13.57

Since, then, truth is one (for falsehood has countless byways), just as the Bacchants tore apart the limbs of Pentheus, so the schools of philosophy, both barbarian and Greek, each boasts that the part it obtained is the whole truth; but at the rising of the light, I think, all things are illuminated. All, then, Greeks and barbarians, who have reached out for the truth, would be shown to have, some not a little, others some part, if indeed any, of the word of truth. Eternity, at any rate, instantly unites in itself the future and the present, and indeed the past; but much more powerful than eternity is truth to gather its own seeds, even if they have fallen in a foreign land. For we would find very many of the opinions held by the schools (those which have not become completely deaf, nor cut off the natural sequence, as the women cut off the man, cutting off reason), even if they seem unlike one another, agreeing in kind and with the whole truth; for they are joined into one either as limb, or part, or species, or genus. Thus the highest string is opposite to the lowest, yet both make one harmony; and in numbers the even differs from the odd, yet both agree in arithmetic, as in shape do the circle, the triangle, the square, and all the shapes that differ from one another. And in the whole universe all the parts, even if they differ from one another, preserve their kinship with the whole. So, then, barbarian and Greek philosophy has torn off a fragment of the eternal truth, not from the mythology of Dionysus, but from the theology of the ever-existing Word. And the one who puts together again what has been divided and makes the Word one and complete, be sure, will behold the truth without danger.