PYTHAGORAS.
Of the great educators of antiquity, I esteem Pythagoras the most eminent and successful. Everything of his doctrine and discipline comes commended by its elegance and humanity, and justifies the name he bore of the golden-souled Samian, and founder of the Greek culture. He seems to have stood in providential nearness to the human sensibility, as if his were a maternal relation as well, and he owned the minds whom he nurtured and educated. The first of philosophers, taking the name for its modesty of pretension, he justified his claim to it in the attainments and services of his followers; his school having given us Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Plutarch, Plotinus, and others of almost equal fame, founders of states and cultures.
He was most fortunate in his biographer. For, next to the Gospels, I know of nothing finer of the kind than the mythological portrait drawn of him by Jamblichus, his admiring disciple, and a philosopher worthy of his master. How mellow the coloring, the drapery disposed so gracefully about the person he paints! I look upon this piece of nature with ever fresh delight, so reverend, humane, so friendly in aspect and Olympian. Nor is the interest less, but enhanced rather by the interfusion of fable into the personal history, the charm of a subtle idealism being thus given it, relating him thereby to the sacred names of all times. There is in him an Oriental splendor, as of sunrise, reflected on statues, blooming in orchards, an ambrosial beauty and sweetness, as of autumnal fruits and of women.
"In all he did,
Some picture of the golden times was hid."
Personally, he is said to have been the most beautiful and godlike of all those who had been celebrated in history before his time. As a youth, his aspect was venerable and his habits strictly temperate, so that he was reverenced and honored by elderly men. He attracted the attention of all who saw him, and appeared admirable in all eyes. He was adorned by piety and discipline, by a mode of life transcendently good, by firmness of soul, and by a body in due subjection to the mandates of reason. In all his words and actions, he discovered an inimitable quiet and serenity, not being subdued at any time by anger, emulation, contention, or any precipitation of conduct. He was reverenced by the multitude as one under the influence of divine inspiration. He abstained from all intoxicating drinks, and from animal food, confining himself to a chaste nutriment. Hence, his sleep was short and undisturbed, his soul vigilant and pure, his body in a state of perfect and invariable health. He was free from the superstitions of his time, and pervaded with a deep sense of duty towards God, and veneration for his divine attributes and immanency in things. He fixed his mind so intently on the attainment of wisdom, that systems and mysteries inaccessible to others were opened to him by his magic genius and sincerity of purpose. The great principle with which he started, that of being a seeker rather than possessor of truth, seemed ever to urge him forward with a diligence and an activity unprecedented in the history of the past, and perhaps unequalled since. He visited every man who could claim any degree of fame for wisdom or learning, whilst the relics of antiquity and the simplest operations of nature seemed to yield to his researches; and we moderns are using his eyes in many departments of activity into which pure thought enters, being indebted to him for important discoveries alike in science and metaphysics.
"His institution at Crotona was the most comprehensive and complete of any of which we read. His aim being at once a philosophical school, a religious brotherhood, and a political association. And all these characters appear to have been inseparably united in the founder's mind. It must be considered as a proof of upright intentions in Pythagoras which ought to rescue him from all suspicion of selfish motives, that he chose for his associates persons whom he deemed capable of grasping the highest truths which he could communicate, and was not only willing to teach them all he knew, but regarded the utmost cultivation of the intellectual faculties as a necessary preparation for the work to which he destined them. He instituted a society, an order, as one may now call it, composed of young men, three hundred in number, carefully selected from the noblest families, not only of Crotona, but of the other Italian cities.
"Those who confided themselves to the guidance of his doctrine and discipline, conducted themselves in the following manner:—
"They performed their morning walks alone in places where there happened to be an appropriate solitude and quiet, and where there were temples and groves, and other things adapted to give delight. For they thought it was not proper to converse with any one till they had rendered their own soul sedate and co-harmonized with the reasoning power. For they apprehended it to be a thing of a turbulent nature to mingle in a crowd as soon as they rose from bed. But after the morning walk, they associated with each other, and employed themselves in discussing doctrines and disciplines, and in the correction of their manners and lives.
"They employed their time after dinner, which consisted of bread and honey without wine, in domestic labors and economies, and in the hospitalities due to strangers and their guests, according to the laws. All business of this sort was transacted during these hours of the day.