Two widely different schools of philosophy now arose in the western Greek colonies of lower Italy. Xenophanes, a native of Ionia, who had fled to E'lea, was the founder of one, and Pythagoras, of Samos, of the other. The former, known as the Eleat'ic philosophy, admitted a supreme intelligence, eternal and incorporeal, pervading all things, and, like the universe itself, spherical in form. This system was developed in the following century by Parmen'ides and Zeno, who exercised a great influence upon the Greek mind. Pythagoras was the first Grecian to assume the title of philosopher, although he was more of a religious teacher. Having traveled extensively in the East, he returned to Samos about 540 B.C.; but, finding the condition of his country, which was then ruled by the despot Polycrates, unfavorable to the progress of his doctrines, he moved to Croto'na, in Italy, and established his school of philosophy there.
Pythagoras,
Vexed with the Samian despot's lawless sway
(For tyrants ne'er loved wisdom), crossed the seas,
And found a home on the Hesperian shore,
Time when the Tarquin arched the infant Rome
With vaults, the germ of Cæsar's golden hall.
There, in Crotona's state, he held a school
Of wisdom and of virtue, teaching men
The harmony of aptly portioned powers,
And of well-numbered days: whence, as a god,
Men honored him; and, from his wells refreshed,
The master-builder of pure intellect,
Imperial Plato, piled the palace where
All great, true thoughts have found a home forever.
—J. STUART BLACKIE.
Pythagoras made some important discoveries in geometry, music, and astronomy. The demonstration of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid is attributed to him. He also discovered the chords in music, which led him to conceive that the planets, striking upon the ether through which they move in their celestial orbits; produce harmonious sounds, varying according to the differences of the magnitudes, velocities, and relative distances of the planets, in a manner corresponding to the proportion of the notes in a musical scale. Hence the "music of the spheres." From what can be gathered of the astronomical doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he was possessed of the true idea of the solar system, which was revived by Coper'nicus and fully established by Newton. With respect to God, Pythagoras appears to have taught that he is the universal, ever-existent mind, the first principle of the universe, the source and cause of all animal life and motion, in substance similar to light, in nature like truth, incapable of pain, invisible, incorruptible, and only to be comprehended by the mind. His philosophy and teachings are thus pictured by the poet THOMSON:
Here dwelt the Samian sage; to him belongs
The brightest witness of recording fame.
He sought Crotona's pure, salubrious air,
And through great Greece his gentle wisdom taught.
His mental eye first launched into the deeps
Of boundless ether; where unnumbered orbs,
Myriads on myriads, through the pathless sky
Unerring roll, and wind their steady way.
There he the full consenting choir beheld;
There first discerned the secret band of love,
The kind attraction, that to central suns
Binds circling earths, and world with world unites.
Instructed thence, he great ideas formed
Of the whole-moving, all-informing God,
The Sun of Beings! beaming unconfined—
Light, life, and love, and ever active power:
Whom naught can image, and who best approves
The silent worship of the moral heart,
That joys in bounteous Heaven and spreads the joy.
Pythagoras also taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which he probably derived from the Egyptians; and he professed to preserve a distinct remembrance of several states of existence through which his soul had passed. It is related of him that on one occasion, seeing a dog beaten, he interceded in its behalf, saying, "It is the soul of a friend of mine, whom I recognize by its voice." It would seem as if the poet COLERIDGE had at times been dimly conscious of the reality of this Pythagorean doctrine, for he says:
Oft o'er my brain does that strange fancy roll
Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings as perplex the soul
Self-questioned in her sleep: and some have said
We lived ere yet this robe of flesh we wore.
One of our favorite American poets; LOWELL, indulges in a like fancy in the following lines from that dream, like, exquisite fantasy, "In the Twilight," found in the Biglow Papers:
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dream-land sent,
That makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a splendor that came and went,
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere—
Of memories that stay not and go not,
Like music once heard by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it—
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show—
A something too vague, could I name it,
For others to know,
As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!
And yet, could I live it over,
This life that stirs in my brain—
Could I be both maiden and lover,
Moon and tide, bee and clover,
As I seem to have been, once again—
Could I but speak and show it,
This pleasure, more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,
The world should not lack a poet,
Such as it had
In the ages glad
Long ago.
On the whole, the system of Pythagoras, with many excellencies, contained some gross absurdities and superstitions, which were dignified with the name of philosophy, and which exerted a pernicious influence over the opinions of many succeeding generations.