telligence as wholly distinct from matter and opposed to it. "Intelligence," he says, "is infinite; it rules by itself, and is mixed up with nothing, but is alone, in and by itself; for if it were not by itself, but mixed up with something else, it would have a part of all things, if mixed with any. For in all there is a part of all, as we have said." Our souls are participations of the infinite intelligence which pervades all, and animates and informs the material world. The peculiar operation of intelligence is in the arranging and disposing of the elementary particles. It differs from the motive force of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in its nature, but not in its effects. The latter is a quality or attribute of the material element, whereas the former is a distinct and immaterial substance, although the nature and power of this immaterial principle were not fully understood by Anaxagoras, and were developed only by later philosophers. Still, in asserting the immaterial, he merited well of philosophy, and stands considerably in advance of his Ionian predecessors.

Diogenes, the other disciple of Anaximenes, was born at Apollonia in Crete. He is said to have succeeded Anaxagoras in the chair of philosophy at Miletus, and to have visited Athens, where Demetrius Phalereus says he excited such envy as to be in danger of his life. He wrote a work on nature, of which some fragments have been preserved by Simplicius and others. He followed Anaximenes in making air the principle of whatever exists. Air is with Diogenes an eternal and immortal body, and is possessed of rational intelligence; and here he gives it greater perfection than was accorded by Anaximenes. The latter admitted life and motion in air, but did not consider intelligence as its essential property. With Diogenes the main idea is that of intelligence. He considers the universe as arranged in the most perfect harmony and order, and from this infers the necessity of intelligence. The human soul is of this nature, and is a participation of the original infinite air.

The Ionian school came to a close in Archelaus, a disciple of Anaxagoras, and according to the most probable authorities an Athenian. He is said to have taught philosophy at Athens, and to have been the master of Socrates. He endeavored to unite the infinite air which Anaximenes and Diogenes made the principle of all things with the intelligence and homœomeriæ of Anaxagoras, and to have

regarded this intelligence as material, and of the nature of air. His doctrine of ethics was, that right and wrong are not so by nature, but by law, or, as Ritter understands vóμos, by the distribution and arrangement of the elements.

Heraclitus the Ephesian is usually classed among the Ionian philosophers, chiefly because he can be ranked with no other school. He flourished about the sixty-ninth Olympiad (500 B. C.). He was of a gloomy and melancholy disposition, treating with contempt the opinions of all the rest of the world, and therefore the more attached to his own. He has been justly surnamed the obscure, and compares himself to the Sibyl, who, he says, "speaking with inspired mouth, smileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries, by the power of the god." Like his predecessors of the Ionian school, Heraclitus busied himself with the attempt to discover the elementary principle of things, and his conclusion was, that "no one of the gods or men made this world, but it was, is, and always will be an ever-living fire." The harmony of the world proceeds from conflicting impulses, as that of the lyre, or the bow, and the strife between opposite tendencies is the cause, the parent, of all things. Everything is composed of contrary and opposing elements; the same thing is both good and evil, young and old, though not at the same time, or under the same aspect. He dwells much on the continual change which is found in everything. We cannot go twice to the same river, for different waters are constantly flowing down, and we ourselves are not the same, but are subject to a continual change. Men are mortal gods, and gods immortal men: the death of one is the life of the other. This, taken in connection with another expression of Heraclitus, that death is in our life, and life in our death, shows that what he calls gods are men rendered immortal by death. He adduced no arguments to prove his assertion that fire was the principle of all phenomena, and there is so much that is dark and figurative in the expressions of this philosopher, that many have thought that by fire he did not mean the element which we call fire, but that he used the word in a figurative sense, to express the one living essence, absolute life and motion. He endowed fire with reason, and maintained that man is naturally irrational, and becomes rational only through the fire which embraces all. The delusion, that he has a rea

son of his own, arises from ignorance, and although reason is universal, the majority live as though they had an intelligence of their own. Wherefore the criterion of truth with him is the universal and divine reason. That which appears the same to all is to be believed, for it rests on the authority of the universal reason; but the particular opinion of any one person is not to be trusted for the opposite reason. The universal Heraclitus considers as the true, the divine; and the soul inhaling the breath of life, which is the fire that pervades all, receives the universal life within itself.

The idea of the unity and divinity of all is a characteristic feature of the Ionian philosophy. Here atheism and pantheism seem to meet and combine in almost equal parts. In one the atheistic element slightly predominates, in another it is the pantheistic which is the more apparent, but both are everywhere discoverable in their philosophy. We find in none of them an individual and determinate divinity, but they all hold to a universal soul animating and informing all nature. Starting from the sensible phenomena it was impossible to get to the purely intelligible. There is no logical process by which they could pass from the creature to the Creator. But however little importance we may attach to their physiological investigations, we must remember that they began the philosophic movement of Greece, and opened the way for others. Their doctrines hardly deserve the name of philosophy. Endeavoring to explain the growth or development of the world from the original, eternal matter, one thought it proceeded from water, another from air, a third from fire, and a fourth, rejecting all these, maintained that it proceeded from a mixture of all the elements. Their philosophical investigations were nothing more than a physiological inquiry into the method of the production of the universe, very much like the learned researches of modern physicists, who endeavor to explain the formation of the world out of the gases. But in their rude and half-formed doctrines we behold the dawn of philosophy upon Greece. Slowly breaking forth from the dark night of poetical idolatry and mythical superstition, the spirit of inquiry spread over Greece, and prepared the way for a brighter age. As a modern writer well observes, "Without the errors of Thales, Socrates might have spent his life in spoiling mar

ble, Plato might have been only a second-rate poet, and Aristotle an intriguing pedagogue."

About the same time with the Ionian school flourished the Pythagoreans. Their founder, Pythagoras, was a contemporary of the earlier Ionians. He was born at Samos in the forty-ninth Olympiad (584 B. C.). The fabulous legends of which he is the subject are nearly as ancient as history itself.

"All the fables and anecdotes recited," says Dr. Ritter, "reveal to us the saint, the worker of miracles, the teacher of a divine wisdom; his very birth is marvellous and wonderful; some accounts making him the son of Apollo, others of Hermes. Wherever he appeared, a divine halo shone around him; he is said to have exhibited a golden thigh; Abaxes the Scythian came to him flying on a golden arrow; he was seen at different places at the same time; wild beasts were obedient to his call; the rivergod held converse with him; he received from Hermes the gift of the recollection of his previous existence, and the power to awaken the same remembrance in others; he heard the harmony of the spheres; and his sayings passed for unerring wisdom. Who now will wonder that he received from the Crotoniats the title of Hyperborean Apollo?"- Vol. I. p. 330.

Almost all authorities agree that Pythagoras travelled into Egypt, but it is less certain that he visited the Magi of Persia and Chaldæa, or the Gymnosophists of India. Dr. Ritter attaches very little importance to his foreign travels, and thinks he learned very little from the Egyptians. Although Pythagoras may not have been initiated into all the secret lore of the priests of Egypt, there is much in his doctrine that he must have brought from that country, and also much that would confirm the assertion that he visited India. The resemblance between the Pythagorean and Egyptian symbols is far from inconsiderable. The funeral customs were the same, and both the Egyptians and Pythagoreans abstained from particular sorts of food. The doctrine of metempsychosis or transmigration of souls was taught by the Egyptians. On his return from Egypt, Pythagoras opened a school at Samos and taught his doctrines in a symbolic form. He is said to have received his moral maxims, which he called divine precepts, from Empedoclea, the priestess of Delos, and to have visited Crete, where he was admitted into all the mystical secrets of the caverns of Ida. From Crete he went to Sparta, to Elis, and to Phlius. At this latter

THIRD SERIES.

VOL. III. NO. I.

5

place he was asked by King Leon what was his profession, and, disclaiming the title of copós, or wise man, which was borne by those before him who gave themselves up to the study of wisdom, he called himself pióropos, a lover or seeker of wisdom, which was afterwards used by all who cultivated wisdom. From Samos he migrated to Croton, in Magna Græcia, about 540 B. C. Here he assembled a large number of disciples, on whom he enjoined a particular mode of life. Dr. Ritter tells us:

"The association founded by Pythagoras appears to have been a secret society: several traditions refer to this, the greater part of which were, however, in later times, exaggerated into the improbable, if not the impossible. The complete initiation in the orgies, as in all similar institutions, was preceded by certain courses of probation and minor inductions. A peculiar practice is imputed to Pythagoras; that he first of all examined the physiognomy of the candidates for initiation; he then habituated them, during the period of probation, to a long silence (exeμvoía). The periods of the several initiations are given differently, and indeed in such matters we must not expect to be able to speak with positive certainty. It is probable, however, and indeed consistent with the general constitution of such associations, that the Pythagoreans were divided, according to the grade of initiation, into different classes, the denominations of which we are utterly ignorant of, except the very general classification into Exoterici and Esoterici. In such holy fraternities it is not surprising that much should have been supported by an appeal to the respect entertained by the associates for the original founder; and this, in all probability, is the explication of the far-famed avròs pa of the Pythagoreans. There is, moreover, nothing remarkable in the admission of women to the mysteries, those much-famed female Pythagoreans. The institution was maintained by its members living in common, by common customs, by bodily and mental exercises; there were certain precepts for the direction of the associates delivered, partly in symbolical aphorisms, the import of which may indeed be guessed at, but cannot be accurately given; partly in plain and clearly expressed rules of conduct, some of which, it is not unlikely, have come down to us in the so-called golden verses of Pythagoras. To the community of living practised by the Pythagoreans belonged the common meals (ovooiría), for which particular sorts of food appear to have been enjoined by their first founder; though, indeed, the statements on this point are far from unanimous. Lastly, they had also certain peculiar ordinances to be observed in the burial of adepts. The asserted community of property looks like an exaggeration of later days; for it is contra