Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/157

 scholars to resign up their understandings to his authority and dictates. The great simplicity of his manners, with the wisdom of his axioms and symbols, charmed an ignorant age, which found real advantages by following his peaceful measures, much above those that were formerly procured by rapine and violence. This seems to be a true account of Pythagoras, in the history of whose reputation there is nothing extraordinary, since civilisers of nations have always been as much magnified as the inventors of the most useful arts: but one can no more conclude from thence that Pythagoras knew as much as Aristotle or Democritus, than that Friar Bacon was as great a mathematician as Dr Barrow or Mr Newton, because he knew enough to be thought a conjurer in the age in which he lived, and no despicable person in any other.

But it may not be amiss to give a taste of some of the Pythagorean notions, such I mean as they first started in Europe, and chiefly valued themselves upon. Of this sort were their arithmetical speculations: by them they pretended to explain the causes of natural things. The following account of their explication of generation is taken out of Censorinus and :