Page:Apollonius of Tyana - the pagan Christ of the third century.pdf/92

Rh guilty resorted to his sanctuary at Delphi to seek refuge from the avenging Furies. He himself had shown an example of penitent submission when he kept the flocks of Admetus. And consistently with this progress of ideas, there arose a great and mysterious embodiment of ancient wisdom which nearly became the Buddha of the West, and which would probably have remained so to this day, but that the appearance and triumph of Christianity caused the Western world to deviate for ever from its original course: that embodiment of wisdom was Pythagoras. If we are to believe the traditions which relate to him, he had devoted himself specially to the worship of Apollo, and his disciples in more modern times were often disposed to look upon him as the earthly incarnation of the god of light. Pythagoras not only founded a school of philosophy, but he left behind him an organised association of men, a kind of church, whose members, linked together by peculiar doctrines and initiations, sought to bring about political and moral reforms in the countries where their societies were established. There