PYTHAGORAS.

Pythagoras is the first of the ancient sages who took the name of philosopher. Before him, those who excelled in the knowledge of nature, and made themselves conspicuous by an exemplary life, were called sages, σοφοί. That title appearing to him too assuming, he took another, which showed that he ascribed not to himself the possession of wisdom, but only the desire of possessing it. He therefore called himself philosopher; that is to say, a lover of wisdom. The professors of the science of nature and of morals, have retained that name ever since. Cicero tells us the native country of that new title, what gave occasion to it, and its signification. “A quibus ducti deinceps omnes, qui in rerum contemplatione studia ponebant, sapientes et habebantur, et nominabantur: idque eorum nomen usque ad Pythagorae manavit ætatem: quem, ut scribit auditor Platonis Ponticus Heraclides, vir doctus in primis, Phliuntem ferunt venisse, eumque cum Leonte, Principe Phliasiorum,

doctè et copiosè disseruisse quædam: cujus ingenium, et eloquentiam cum admiratus esset Leon, quæsivisse ex eo qua maximè arte confideret: at illum artem quidem se scire nullam, sed esse philosophum: admiratum Leontem novitatem nominis, quæsisse, quinam essent Philosophi, et quid inter eos, et reliquos inter esset Pythagoram autem respondisse, similem sibi videri vitam hominum, et mercatum eum, qui haberetur maximo ludorum appuratu totius Graeciae celebritate: nam ut illic alii corporibus exercitatis gloriam, et nobilitatem corona peterent: alii emendi aut vendendi quaestu, et lucro ducerentur: esset autem quoddam genus eorum, idque vel maximè ingenuum, qui nec plausum, nec lucrum quaererent, sed visendi cauda venirent, studioseque perspicerent, quid agiretur, et quo modo: item nos quasi in mercatus quandam celebritatem ex urbe aliqua, sic in hanc vitam ex alia vita, et natura profectos; alios gloriae servire, alios pecuniæ: raros esse quosdam, qui, cæteris omnibus pro nihilo habitis, rerum naturam studiosi intuerentur: hos se appellare sapientiae studiosos, id est philosophos; et ut illic liberalissimum esset, spectare, nihil sibi acquirentem, sic in vita longe omnibus studiis contemplationem rerum, cognitionemque praestare. Nec verò Pythagoras nominis solum inventor, sed rerum etiam ipsarum amplificator fuit. Cicer. Tuscul. Quaest. lib. v, cap. iii. ²⁴—From whom all afterwards, who studied nature, were accounted and called'wise men; and that name continued till the time of Pythagoras, who, according to Ponticus Heraclides, the disciple of Plato, and a very learned man, is said to come to Phlius, and to have disputed on some points with Leon, the prince of that place, in a learned and copious manner. Leon admired his parts and eloquence, and asked what art he chiefly excelled in; to which Pythagoras made answer, ‘ that he knew no art, but was a philosopher:’ Leon, wondering at the novelty of the name, enquired, 'who philosophers were, and what difference there was between them and others?’ Pythagoras replied, 'that the life of man seemed to him to resemble that fair, which was kept by all Greece with the celebration of games. For as there, some sought for glory by the exercise of the body, and nobility by obtaining a crown; and others aimed at profit and gain in buying and selling; but a third sort, who were people of the best fashion, neither wanted applause nor gain, but came only to see and consider what was doing, and in what manner: so likewise we are come from another life and nature into this life, as from some city to the celebration of a fair; and some hunt after glory, and others money; and some few, despising every thing else, diligently study nature; these are called lovers of wisdom, that is philosophers: and as in the other case, it is more noble to look on than to acquire any thing, so in life, the knowledge and contemplation of nature is preferable to all other studies.’ Pythagoras not only invented the name, but improved the science itself.”

Pythagoras flourished in the time of Tarquin, and not in that of Numa. The mistake of those who say that he came over into Italy in the time of Numa, is glorious to him; for the only reason which has made them fancy so, is that they could not believe that Numa should have been so able a man, and so great a philosopher, had he not been a disciple of Pythagoras. He made himself very illustrious by his learning and virtue, and proved a very useful man in reforming and instructing the world. His eloquence must needs have been very powerful, seeing his exhortations moved the inhabitants of a great city, plunged in debauchery, to avoid luxury and good cheer, and to live according to the rules of virtue: nay, he prevailed upon the ladies to part with their fine clothes and all their ornaments, and to make a sacrifice of them to the chief deity of the place.

“He came to Crotona,” says Justin, Justin lib. xx, cap. iv. ²⁵ “and by his authority reclaimed the people, who were sunk in luxury, and brought them to a frugal way of living. He daily recommended virtue, and laid open the vice of luxury, and showed the misery of those cities that were infected with it: he inspired the multitude with such a love to frugality, that it was extremely rare to see any of them extravagant. He frequently instructed the married women, separately from their husbands, and children from their parents. The former he taught chastity and obedience to their husbands; and the latter modesty, and the love of learning. In the mean time he inculcated frugality on all, as the parent of virtue, and by continual exhortations, prevailed on the ladies to part with their fine clothes, and all their other ornaments as instruments of luxury, to bring them to the temple of Juno, and dedicate them to that goddess, declaring that they looked on chastity, and not on clothes, as the true ornaments of women. What reformation was wrought amongst the young men, evidently appears from the conquered obstinacy of the women.” The last words of this author are somewhat satirical, for he reasons thus: If Pythagoras was able to overcome the obstinacy of women, you may judge of the progress he made in the reformation of young men. It is certain that the love of fine clothes is a passion of so great resistance, that nothing will so much reflect back the darts of a preacher. See the efficacy of Capistran’s sermons against gamesters; but it is not said that he had the same success against jewels. Connecte made more conquests against head dresses with stones thrown by children, than with rhetorical figures. These Christian preachers could not do what a heathen philosopher did. But however let us not forget the actions of the Roman ladies in the time of Camillus.

Pythagoras engaged his disciples to practise the

most difficult things; for he made them undergo a noviciate of silence, which lasted two years at least; but he made it last five years for those whom he knew to be most inclined to speak. It was a hard discipline: the most difficult victory that can be gotten is to have the mastery of one’s tongue. See among Cato’s distiches the encomium bestowed on those who know how to be silent when it is fit they should be so. Servius mentions the noviciate of five years, and here is what Apuleius observes concerning that which was imposed for the space of five years on such disciples as were not so discreet as others.

“The Pythagoreans were not entirely to forbear speaking, nor were all to be silent for the same space of time. A short time was thought sufficient for those that were reserved; but the space of five years was imposed on them who were more inclined to talk.” Apul. in Florid. ²⁶

He made them live in common; they renounced their property to their patrimony, and brought all they had to the feet of their master. An ill construction was put upon their union, and it proved very fatal to them. That society of students being looked upon as a faction which conspired against the state; sixty of them were destroyed, and the rest ran away. “Three hundred young men,” says Justin, Justin, lib. xx. cap. iv. ²⁷ “formed into a society by a kind of oath, lived together by themselves, and were looked upon as a private faction by the state, who intended to burn them as they were assembled in one house. Almost sixty of them perished in the tumult, and the rest went into banishment.” We can neither learn from this passage of Justin, nor from what follows, whether the storm was excited during the life of Pythagoras; but according to Polybius, the Pythagoreans were burnt in Magna Græcia, some time before the war, which Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, made against the Crotoniates; it seems, therefore, that they were not burnt during their master’s life;

for there are one hundred and twenty years between the expulsion of Tarquin, and that war of Dionysius against Crotona.

One of his greatest cares was to correct the abuses committed by married persons; he believed that without this, the public peace and liberty, a good form of government, and other such things about which he was very zealous, would not be able to make private men happy. It is said that this philosopher, being arrived in Italy, shut himself up in a subterranean place, having desired his mother to keep an account of what should happen. When he had been in that place as long as he thought fit, his mother delivered her table-book to him, as it had been agreed between them. He found in it the dates and other circumstances of what had passed: he came out of that place with a pale and lean face; he called the people together, and assured them that he came from hell, and to persuade them of the truth of it, he told them what had passed in the city. All his hearers were so moved with what he said, that the whole assembly fell groaning and crying; and they doubted no longer but he was a divine person, and they gave him their wives to instruct them. It was without doubt on that occasion that he frighted ill husbands, by telling them that those who refuse to pay the matrimonial duties, to their wives, are tormented in hell with great severity. In all likelihood he spoke also of the punishments that are inflicted upon intriguing women, and we ought to believe that it was one of the reasons which moved the Crotoniates to send their wives to his school. Observe the contradiction of that great master. He taught the metempsychosis on the one hand, without confining himself to the three removings mentioned by Pindar; Olymp. Od. II. ²⁸ and on the other hand he was so bold as to say, that he had seen in hell the souls of Homer, Hesiod, &c. very much tormented.

The metempsychosis destroyed hell, as he declares it in Ovid:

O genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis,
Quid Styga, quid tenebras, et nomina vana timetis,
Materiem vatum, falsique pericula mundi?
Corpora sive rogus flamma, seu tabe vetustas
Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis.

Ovid. Met. lib. xv, ver. 153.

Why thus frighted at an empty name,
A dream of darkness, and fictitious flame?
Vain themes of wit! which but in poems pass,
And fables of the world that never was.
What feels the body when the soul expires,
By time corrupted or consum'd by fires.

Dryden.

But he rather chose to acquire authority, and make himself fit to extirpate debauchery by contradicting himself, than to follow a coherent method of teaching, which would not have proved so useful.

I wonder that a philosopher, so learned in astronomy, geometry, and the other parts of mathematics, should take delight in delivering his finest precepts under the veil of enigmas. That veil was so thick that it has afforded the interpreters a large field of conjectures, and as many mystical senses as they pleased. That symbolical way of teaching was very much in use in the eastern countries and Egypt. Whence Pythagoras without doubt acquired it. He came from his travels loaded with the learning he had got in all the countries he went through. It is thought that he made a plentiful harvest among the Jews, and that he learned a great many things of Ezekiel and Daniel. Nay, it is pretended that his Tetractys is the same thing with the name Tetragrammaton, a name not to be pronounced, and full of mysteries, as the Rabbins say. Others assert, “that the Tetractys, that great object of veneration, and by which they used to swear, was only a mysterious way of teaching by numbers.” But we must

not forget to say, that Pythagoras and his successors had two ways of teaching, the one for those that were initiated, and the others for strangers and profane men. The first was clear and perspicuous, the second was symbolical and enigmatical. See the Xlllth chapter of a book of John Schefferus, professor at Upsal, intitled, “De natura et constitutione Philosophise Italicae,” printed at Upsal in the year 1664, in 8vo.

They who explain, in a literal sense, the order he gave to abstain from eating of beans allege, amongst other reasons, that Pythagoras was instructed by the Egyptians, and even suffered himself to be circumcised, that he might be admitted to their most secret mysteries: now the Egyptians abstained from beans; they sowed none; and if they found any that had grown up without being sown, they would not touch them. The priests carried the superstition farther, they durst not so much as look upon them, they accounted them unclean, and had rather chosen to eat the flesh of their fathers; whence they conclude that Pythagoras, who had been their disciple, forbad the eating of beans in a literal sense. Several grave authors among the ancients thus understood that prohibition. Some say he chose rather to be killed by those that pursued him, than to make his escape through a field of beans, so great was his respect or abhorrence for that plant! I think Aristoxenus is the only author who says, that Pythagoras would eat them often; but learned men do not much value the testimony of Aristoxenus; they believe he was mistaken, and look upon that Pythagorean abstinence as a certain matter of fact, and enquire into the reasons of it. Aristotle gives four or five reasons for it; one of which is, because beans were made use of in the election of magistrates. Those that pretend that the prohibition was a moral precept, and that Pythagoras understood it only in an allegorical sense, fancy that he forbad thereby

by his disciples to meddle with the government. This is grounded upon the customs of some cities, wherein every one gave his vote with beans, when they proceeded to the election of magistrates.

Few men, in those times, travelled in so many places as he did. He is looked on by some as a great magician, but Mandæus clears him from that accusation. I might observe a great many other things; but I must be short; nevertheless I shall say something of the metempsychosis. They say that Pythagoras boasted of a special privilege about it; for he asserted that he could remember in what bodies he had been before he was Pythagoras. But he went no farther back than the age of the city of Troy; he had been first Æthalides, who was reputed the son of Mercury, and it being in his choice to demand of that god whatever he would, he begged of him that he might remember every thing after his death. Some time after, he was Euphorbus, and was wounded by Menelaus at the siege of Troy; after the death of Euphorbus, he was Hermotimus, and then a fisherman at Delos named Pyrrhus, and at last Pythagoras, a man who remembered all these transmigrations, and what he had suffered in hell, and what other souls suffer there. Here is a little contradiction; for if the souls of men go from one body into another, they do not go to hell. Our philosopher, according to Ovid, goes no higher than Euphorbus.

Morte carent animae, semperque priore relictâ
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae.
Ipse ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram: cui pectore quondam
Haesit in adverso gravis hasta minoris Atridae.
Cognovi clypeum laevae gestamina nostrae
Nuper Abantæis, templo Junonis in Argis.

Ovid. Metam, lib. xv, ver. 158.

Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats
In other forms, and only changes seats.

In Trojan wars (for I the fact retain).
Euphorbus, I, Pauthous’ sou, was slain
By Menelaus ... at Argos I beheld
In Juno’s fane and knew my former shield.

“O happy memory,” says Lactantius very pleasantly; “O rare memory of Pythagoras. O our wretched forgetfulness, who know nothing of our pre-existence: but perhaps it happened by some particular mistake, or favour, that he only never touched the river of Lethe, nor tasted the waters of oblivion. The vain old man forsooth (as idle old women use to do) invented those stories as if he were talking to credulous children. Had he judged rightly of those to whom he told them, had he looked upon them as men, he would never have been so bold as to forge such lies. But his ridiculous vanity deserves contempt.” Lactantius should have known that Pythagoras ascribed his memory to the favour of the gods; he might have read it in Heraclides; and it will be said, that without this we might easily fancy that Pythagoras prevented the objection which other men would raise against him, because they did not remember any preexistence; but if we consider the thing another way, we shall find nothing in it that is against likelihood. He had 'acquired so great a reputation, and made so many experiments of the blind docility and great credulity of his hearers, that he might easily flatter himself that what he would say, concerning his memory, would not be disbelieved. If you desire to know his several transmigrations since the death of Pythagoras, you need but read the following words, and you will see that he was a courtezan at the third change. “But as it is well known that Pythagoras himself said he was at first Euphorbus; so afterwards, according to Clearchus and Dicæarchus, he became Pyrander, then Callicleas, and after that a beautiful courtezan called Alce.” Aul. Gell. lib. iv, cap. xi. ²⁹ As for the rest, he invented not the metempsychosis:

he learned it of the Egyptians, which made him spoil the fine doctrine he had heard of Pherecydes, about the immortality of the soul, wherewith he had been so moved, that he gave over the trade of an athlete, or wrestler, all of a sudden to study philosophy. I think that it was by reason of this opinion, that he disapproved the sacrificing of beasts, and it is observed that he adored an altar on which no sacrifice had ever been offered, as a place which had never been profaned or polluted.

I have not mentioned the native country of Pythagoras, because there are several opinions about it; some say he was a Tyrrhenian, others a Syrian, others affirm that he was born in the isle of Samos, others in the isle of Cephalonia, &c. The heathen philosophers never said any thing finer than what he said concerning God, and the end of all our actions; and it is likely that he had carried his orthodoxy much farther, had he had the courage to expose himself to martyrdom. He acknowledged the unity of God; for he said that unity was the principle of all things, and that out of it came the subject it made use of as its matter, and that out of its action upon that matter came out numbers, figures, elements, the visible world, &c.

According to Plutarch, he admitted of two independent principles, unity and binary, and ascribed to the first the Divine essence, goodness, and understanding; and to the second the nature of a demon, evil and matter. The worst of it is, that Pythagoras, considering God as the mover of the universe, and the soul of the world, affirmed that our souls are portions of God. There is an objection against this doctrine of Pythagoras to be found in Tully, which cannot be answered.“Nam Pythagoras, qui censuit (Deum) animum esse per naturam rerum omnem intentum et commeantem, ex quo nostri animi caperentur, non vidit distractione humanorum animorum discerpi et dilacerari Deum: et cùm miseri animi essent

quod plerisque contingeret, turn Dei partem esse mise ram: quod fieri non potest. Cur autem quicquam ignoraret animus hominis, si esset Deus? quomodo porrò Deus iste, si nihil esset nisi animus, aut infixus, aut infusus esset in mundo.—For Pythagoras, who thought God to be an active soul, pervading the whole universe, and that our minds were parts of him, did not consider that, by the distinction of human minds God was divided and separated: and that as many of them were miserable, so a part of God was miserable, which is impossible. But why should the mind of man be ignorant of any thing if it were God? And bow could God, were he only a spirit, be fixed or infused in the world?” St Epiphanius ascribes to that philosopher a wild opinion; viz. that God has a corporeal and organised nature, being nothing else but heaven, and making use of the sun and moon as two eyes, and so of the other parts of the firmament. But here is a thought which is absolutely true: Clemens Alexandrinus compares it with St Paul’s words. “None but God is wise,” said Pythagoras. The author of the Jewish antiquities seems to be very well satisfied with the doctrines of several philosophers, especially of Pythagoras, concerning the nature of God; and he doubts not but they had spoken more soundly still, had they not been afraid of persecution: for as Plato says, it is not safe to tell ignorant men the truth concerning the divine nature. We must not forget an observation of Plutarch; when he shows the conformity there was between the thoughts of Numa and those of Pythagoras, he says, that Numa would not have the Deity to be represented by any images, and that God, according to Pythagoras, is an impassible nature, which does not fall under our senses, and can only be the object of the understanding. Plut. in Numa, pag. 65. ³⁰

As for the end of our actions and studies, nothing

can be more admirable, nor more Christian, than what Pythagoras said about it; for he taught that the study of philosophy should tend to make men like God. “Ad divinam similitudinem ducunt, Pythagoræque philosophise finem perfectissimum ostendunt.” This is an encomium bestowed on a piece of poetry, which contains the doctrines of that philosopher. They consist of two parts, which may be very well compared to the purgative and unitive ways so much talked of by our mystics. “Hierocles,” says Scheffer, Joan. Scheffer. de natura et constitutione Philosophiæ Italicae, cap. x, pag. 78. ³¹ “who left most learned commentaries upon the golden verses of Pythagoras, in the beginning of his discourse concerning the Pythagorean philosophy, calls it ‘ purgation and perfection.’ Which two, intimating a twofold use and purpose of it, as I have shown in another place, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans seem to have had two kinds of philosophy; the one purgative, the other perfective; the former to cleanse from evils, to separate from matter and body, and to free from bonds and prison: the latter to perfect, raise, and exalt; and as Hierocles speaks, to introduce the form of the first state, and to render one like God. This Hierocles himself declares in the following words; ‘ The golden verses contain the chief doctrines of all speculative and practical philosophy, whereby one may purify and make himself like God.’” The author whom I have quoted, alleges several other passages, whereby it appears that, according to that philosopher, the acquisition of truth was the only way to attain to likeness of God; but that the truth cannot be known, unless it be enquired after with a purified soul, and such as has overcome the passions of the body. I add to this the testimony of the anonymous author, who wrote the life of Pythagoras. He says, “that the followers of that philosopher taught, that men make themselves perfect three ways. 1. By conversing with the gods; for during that commerce they abstain from every evil action, and become like the Gods as much as such a thing is possible. 2. By doing good to others; for it is God’s property; it is an imitation of God. 3. By going out of this life. The best presents which heaven gave to men, according to Pythagoras, are to speak truth, and do good offices: ‘ those two things said he, ‘ resemble the works of God.’”

The circumstances of the death of Pythagoras are variously reported. He lived at Crotona, in Milo’s house with hi? disciples, and was burnt in it. A man whom he refused to admit into his society, set the house on fire. It is likely that he had not a good physiognomy; for Pythagoras received none for his disciples, but those whose look he liked, after he had examined it according to the rules of art. “He first considered the physiognomy of young men who offered themselves to be his disciples; that is, he examined their manners and dispositions by the features of their countenance, and the habit of their body: and such as were tried and approved by him, were immediately admitted into the society.” Some say that he was suspected of endeavouring to usurp the sovereignty; and that to prevent his design, the Crotoniates set his house on fire. He made his escape through the flames, and went out of the city; but as he was going into a field of beans, he stopped, and chose rather to be killed than to spoil the beans. According to Dicæarchus, he fled to the temple of the Muses at Metapontum, and died there of hunger, after he had fasted forty days. Others say that at his return from the isle of Delos, whither he went to shut the eyes of his master Pherecydes, and to bury him, he himself put a stop to his life, by abstaining from food. According to some writers, he brought all his disciples to the assistance of the Agrigentines against the Syracusans; and having been worsted, he was killed whilst he was running about a field of beans; which does not very well

agree either with the eighty years which they say he lived, or with the ninety, much less still with the ninety-nine, or one hundred and four years mentioned by others. See upon this the learned collections of Menagius. He has not forgotten to quote Arnobius, who affirms that Pythagoras was burnt alive in a temple. Justin intimates that he died without any violence at Metapontum, whither he retired after he had been twenty years at Crotona, and that he died there, being so much admired, that his house was converted into a temple, and that he was honoured as a god. Valerius Maxim us does not say so much of him; but he is none of those who say he was ill used. “Cujus ardentun rogum plenis venerationis oculis Metapon tus aspexit: oppidum Pythagoræ quam suorum cine rum nobilius clariusve monumento. Val. Max. lib. viii, cap. vii, num. 2, in ext. ³²—Whose funeral pile Metapontus beheld with eyes full of veneration: the city was more noted and famous for the ashes of Pythagoras than their own.” St Epiphanius was grossly mistaken when he said that Pythagoras died in the country of the Medians.—Art. Pythagoras.