Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/414

 896 HISTORY OF GREECE. partly in their own mutual relations, partly undei various sym- bolizing fancies, presented themselves to him as the primary cou- etituent elements of the universe, and as a sort of magical key to phenomena, physical as well as moral. And these mathemat- ical tendencies in his teaching, expanded by Pythagoreans, his successors, and coinciding partly also, as has been before stated. Avith the studies of Anaximander and Thales, acquired more and more development, so as to become one of the most glorious and profitable manifestations of Grecian intellect. Living as Pythag- oras did at a time when the stock of experience was scanty, the license of hypothesis unbounded, and the process of deduc- tion without rule or verifying test, he was thus fortunate enough to strike into that track of geometry and arithmetic, in which, from data of experience few, simple, and obvious, an im- mense field of deductive and verifiable investigation may be travelled over. We must at the same time remark, however, that in his mind this track, which now seems so straightforward and well defined, was clouded by strange fancies which it is not easy to understand, and from which it was but partially cleared by his successors. Of his spiritual training much is said, though not upon very good authority. We hear of his memorial disci- pline, his monastic self-scrutiny, his employment of music to soothe disorderly passions, 1 his long novitiate of silence, his knowledge of physiognomy, which enabled him to detect even without trial unworthy subjects, his peculiar diet, and his rigid care for sobriety as well as for bodily vigor. He is also said to have inculcated abstinence from animal food, and this feeling is so naturally connected with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, that we may well believe him to have entertained it, as Empedo- kles also did after him. 2 It is certain that there were peculiar 1 Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. p. 384, ad* fin. Quintilian, Instil. Oratt. ix, 4. 8 Empedokles, ap. Aristot. Rhetoric, i, 14, 2 ; Sextns Empiric ix, 127; Plutarch, De Esu Carnium, pp. 993, 996, 997 ; where he puts Pythagoras and Empedokles together, as having both held the doctrine of the me- tempsychosis, and both prohibited the eating of animal food. Erjpedo- kles supposed that plants had souls, and that the souls of human beings passed after death into plants as well as into animals. " I have been myself heretofore (said lie) a boy, a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a fish of the sea."