Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/154

148 completely posed the philosophers of antiquity, whose interpretations of them were certainly not nearer the mark than Mr. Pickwick’s reading of the famous inscription. It is almost amusing to see the violence they did to these primitive superstitions in order to wring some drop of moral wisdom out of them, to wrench them into some semblance of philosophical profundity. In a paper on the popular superstitions of the ancients I can hardly do better than begin by giving a few specimens of these precious maxims, which have found so much favour in the eyes of ancient philosophers and old women.

Some of the ancients themselves remarked the striking resemblance which the precepts of Pythagoras bore to the rules of life observed by Indian fakirs, Jewish Essenes, Egyptians, Etruscans, and Druids. Thus, for example, Plutarch mentions the view that Pythagoras must have been an Etruscan born and bred, since the Etruscans were the only people known to observe literally the rules inculcated by the philosopher, such as not to step over a broom, not to leave the impress of a pot on the ashes, and other precepts of the same sort. This view of the Etruscan origin of Pythagoras was countenanced by the respectable authorities of Aristotle and Theopompus. Again, Plutarch expressly says that the maxims of Pythagoras were of the same sort as the rules contained in the sacred writings of the Egyptians, and he quotes as instances the Pythagorean precepts, “Do not eat in a chariot,” “Do not sit upon a bushel,” “Do not poke the fire with a sword.”