unworthy of the contemplation of pure wisdom. Others, in whom the tendency to loquacity was observed to be less, had the period commuted. Various humiliations had to be endured; various experiments were made of their powers of self-denial. By these Pythagoras judged whether they were worldly-minded, or whether they were fit to be admitted into the sanctuary of science. Having purged their souls of the baser particles by purifications, sacrifices, and initiations, they were admitted to the sanctuary, where the higher part of the soul was purged by the knowledge of truth, which consists in the knowledge of immaterial and eternal things. For this purpose he commenced with Mathematics, because, as they just preserve the medium between corporeal and incorporeal things, they can alone draw off the mind from Sensible things and conduct them to Intelligibles.

Shall we wonder, then, that he was venerated as a God? He who could transcend all earthly struggles, and the great ambitions of the greatest men, to live only for the sake of wisdom, was he not of a higher stamp than ordinary mortals? Well might later historians picture him as clothed in robes of white, his head crowned with gold, his aspect grave, majestical, and calm; above the manifestation of any human joy, of any human sorrow; enwrapt in contemplation of the deeper mysteries of existence; listening to music and the hymns of Homer, Hesoid, and Thales, or listening to the harmony of the spheres. And to a lively, talkative, quibbling, active, versatile people like the Greeks, what a grand phenomenon must this solemn, earnest, silent, meditative man have appeared!

From Sir Lytton Bulwer's Athens we borrow the following account of the political career of Pythagoras:-"Pythagoras arrived in Italy during the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, according to the testimony of Cicero and Aulus Gellius, and fixed his residence in Croton, a city in the bay of Tarentum, colonized by Greeks of the Achæan tribe. If we may lend a partial credit to the extravagant fables of later disciples, endeavoring to extract from florid super-addition some original germ of simple truth, it

would seem that he first appeared in the character of a teacher of youth, and, as was not unusual in those times, soon rose from the preceptor to the legislator. Dissensions in the city favored his objects. The Senate (consisting of a thousand members, doubtless of a different race from the body of the people-the first the posterity of the settlers, the last the native population) availed itself of the arrival and influence of an eloquent and renowned philosopher. He lent himself to the consolidation of aristocracies, and was equally inimical to democracy and tyranny. But his policy was that of no vulgar ambition. He refused, at least for a time, ostensible power and office, and was contented with instituting an organized and formidable society, not wholly dissimilar to that mighty Order founded by Loyola in times comparatively recent. The disciples admitted into this society underwent examination and probation: it was through degrees that they passed into its higher honors, and were admitted into its deeper secrets. Religion made the basis of the fraternity, but religion connected with human ends of advancement and power. He selected the three hundred who at Croton formed his Order, from the noblest families, and they were professedly reared to know themselves, that so they might be fitted to command the world. It was not long before this society, of which Pythagoras was the head, appears to have supplanted the ancient Senate and obtained the legislative administration. In this Institution Pythagoras stands alone; no other founder of Greek philosophy resembles him. By all accounts he also differed from the other sages of his time in his estimation of the importance of women. He is said to have lectured to, and taught them. His wife was herself a philosopher, and fifteen disciples of the softer sex rank among the prominent ornaments of his school. An Order based upon so profound a knowledge of all that can fascinate or cheat mankind could not fail to secure a temporary power. His influence was unbounded in Croton: it extended to other Italian cities; it amended or overturned political constitutions; and had Pythagoras possessed a more coarse and personal ambition, he

might perhaps have founded a mighty dynasty, and enriched our social annals with the result of a new experiment. But his was the ambition not of a hero, but a sage. He wished rather to establish a system than to exalt himself. His immediate followers saw not all the consequences that might be derived from the fraternity he founded; and the political designs of his gorgeous and august philosophy, only for awhile successful, left behind them but the mummeries of an impotent freemasonry, and the enthusiastic ceremonies of half-witted ascetics.

"It was when this power, so mystic and so revolutionary, had, by the means of branch societies, established itself throughout a considerable portion of Italy, that a general feeling of alarm and suspicion broke out against the sage and his sectarians. The anti-Pythagorean risings, according to Porphyry, were sufficiently numerous and active to be remembered long generations afterwards. Many of the sage's friends are said to have perished, and it is doubtful whether Pythagoras himself fell a victim to the rage of his enemies, or died a fugitive amongst his disciples at Metapontum. Nor was it until nearly the whole of Lower Italy was torn by convulsions, and Greece herself drawn into the contest as pacificator and arbiter, that the ferment was allayed. The Pythagorean institutions were abolished, and the timocratic democracies of the Achæans rose upon the ruins of those intellectual but ungenial oligarchies.

"Pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in his attempt to revolutionize society, he had recourse to aristocracies for his agents. Revolutions, especially those influenced by religion, can never be worked out but by popular emotions. It was from this error of judgment that he enlisted the people against him; for by the account of Neanthes, related by Porphyry, and indeed from all other testimony, it is clearly evident that to popular not party commotion his fall must be ascribed. It is no less clear that after his death, while his philosophical sect remained, his political code crumbled away. The only seeds sown by philosophers which spring up into great States, are those

that, whether for good or evil, are planted in the hearts of the Many."

We cannot omit the story which so long amused the world, respecting his discovery of the musical chords. Hearing one day, in the shop of a blacksmith, a number of men striking successively a piece of heated iron, he remarked that all the hammers, except one, produced harmonious chords, viz. the octave, the fifth, and the third; but the sound between the fifth and the third was discordant. On entering the workshop, he found the diversity of sounds was owing to the difference in the weight of the hammers. He took the exact weights, and on reaching home suspended four strings of equal dimensions, and hanging a weight at the end of each of the strings equal to the weight of each hammer, he struck the strings, and found the sounds correspond with those of the hammers. He then proceeded to the formation of a musical scale.

On this, Dr. Burney, in his History of Music, remarks: "Though both hammers and anvil have been swallowed by ancients and moderns with most ostrich-like digestion, yet upon examination and experiment it appears that hammers of different size and weight will no more produce different tones upon the same anvil, than bows or clappers of different size will from the same string or bell.”

We close here our account of the life of Pythagoras, reminding the reader that one great reason for the fabulous and contradictory assertions collected together in histories and biographies arises from the uncritical manner in which the "authorities" have been used. To take only one "authority" as an example: Iamblicus wrote his Life of Pythagoras with a view of combating the rising doctrine of Christianity, and of opposing by implication a Pagan philosopher to Christ. The miracles that were attributed to Pythagoras have no better source than this.

§ III. PHILOSOPHY OF PYTHAGORAS.

There is no system in the whole course of our history more difficult to seize and represent accurately than that commonly known as the Pythagorean. It has made prodigious noise in the

world; so much so as to be often confounded with its distant echoes. An air of mystery, always inviting to a large class, surrounds it. The marvellous relations concerning its illustrious founder, the supposed assimilation it contains of various elements of Eastern speculation, and the supposed symbolical nature of its doctrines, have all equally combined to render it attractive and contradictory. Every dogma in it has been traced to some prior philosophy. Not a vestige will remain to be called the property of the teacher himself, if we restore to the Jews, Indians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, nay even Thracians, those various portions which he is declared to have borrowed from them.

All this pretended plagiarism we incline to think extremely improbable: Pythagoras was a consequence of Anaximander; and his doctrines, in as far as we can gather from their leading tendency, were but a continuation of that abstract and deductive philosophy of which Anaximander was the originator.

At the outset we must premise, that whatever interest there may be in following out the particular opinions recorded as belonging to Pythagoras, such a process is quite incompatible with our plan. The greatest uncertainty still exists, and must forever exist amongst scholars, respecting the genuineness of those opinions. Even such as are recorded by trustworthy authorities are always vaguely attributed by them to "the Pythagoreans," not to Pythagoras. Modern criticism has clearly shown that the works attributed to Timæus and Archytas are spurious; and that the supposed treatise of Ocellus Lucanus on the "Nature of the All" cannot even have been written by a Pythagorean. Plato and Aristotle, the only ancient writers who are to be trusted in this matter, do not attribute any peculiar doctrines to Pythagoras, The reason is simple. Pythagoras taught in secret; and never wrote. What he taught his disciples it is impossible accurately to learn from what those disciples themselves taught. His influence over their minds was unquestionably immense; and this influence would communicate to his school a distinctive tendency, but not one accordant doctrine; for each scholar would carry out that