PYTHAGORAS

Virtue and health and all good and God are a harmony.—Pythagoras.

One is the principle of all.—Philolaus the Pythagorean.

All things that are known have number.—Id.

The principles of all virtue are three, knowledge, power, and choice. Knowledge is like sight, whereby we contemplate and judge things; power is like bodily strength, whereby we endure and adhere to things; choice is like hands to the soul, whereby we stretch out and lay hold of things.—Theages the Pythagorean.

The Doric discipline, even in Sparta, where it could exhibit its character most freely, produced merely soldiers and not free citizens or cultivated men. It was, nevertheless, in its essential features, the Hellenic ideal, and numerous attempts were made to remedy its defects and to give it permanence, by connecting it with higher than mere local and aristocratic interests. One of the earliest and most noteworthy of these was made by Pythagoras.

This extraordinary personage appears to have been born in the island of Samos in the first quarter of the sixth century b.c. Though he was born among Ionians, his family appears to have been Achaian and, to some extent, Pelasgian (Tyrrhenian), having emigrated from Phlius in the Argolid. After distinguishing himself in Ionia, he emigrated in middle life to Magna GrÆcia, and took up his abode in the Achaian colony of Croton, then a rich and flourishing city. The cause of his emigration seems to have been the tyranny of Polycrates, which apparently imparted to him a prejudice against Ionic tendencies in general. Whether he derived any part of his famous learning from visits to Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, etc., as was asserted in later times, is not clear. It is not improbable that he visited Egypt, and there is good reason for believing that he became acquainted with Phoenician theology through Pherecydes of Syros. That he was an omnivorous student is attested by his contemporary, Heraclitus. He was undoubtedly affected by the physical theories current in his time in Ionia, while he plainly drew his political and ethical ideas from Sparta or Crete.

Of his activity in Ionia we know little; but we may perhaps conclude that it was of the same nature as that which he afterwards displayed in Italy. Here he appeared in the triple capacity of theologian, ethical teacher, and scientist. His chief interest for us lies in the fact that he was apparently the first man in Greece, and, indeed, in the western world, who sought to establish an ethical institution apart from the State. In this respect he bears a strong resemblance to the prophet Isaiah, who may be said to have originated the idea of a Church (see p. 133). Pythagoras' aim seems to have been to gather round him a body of disciples who should endeavor to lead a perfect life, based upon certain theological or metaphysical notions, and guided by a rule of almost monastic strictness. Like other men who have found themselves in the midst of irreverence, selfishness, and democratic vulgarity and anarchy, he believed that his time demanded moral discipline, based upon respect for authority and character, with a firm belief in future retribution, and inculcated by a careful study of the order and harmony of nature; and such discipline he strove, with all his might, to impart. Having no faith in the capacity of the State to be an instrument for his purpose, he set to work independently of it, and seems to have met with very marked success, drawing to him many of the best men and women of Southern Italy. So numerous and powerful, indeed, did his followers become that they held the balance of power in several cities, and were able to use it for the enforcement of their own principles. As these were exceedingly undemocratic, and opposed to the tendencies of the time, they finally roused bitter opposition, so that the Pythagoreans were persecuted and attempts made to exterminate them with fire and sword. In this way their political influence was broken, and their assemblies suppressed; but the effect of Pythagoras' teaching was not lost. His followers, scattered abroad throughout the Hellenic world, carried his precepts and his life-ideal with them. In the following centuries they found many noble sympathizers—Pindar, Socrates, Plato, Epicharmus, etc.—and underwent many modifications, until they finally witnessed a resurrection, in the forms of Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism, after the Christian era. In these later guises, Pythagoreanism lost itself in mysticism and contemplation, turning its followers into inactive ascetics; but in its original form it seems to have been especially adapted to produce men of vigorous action and far-sighted practicality. Milo of Croton, the inimitable wrestler; Archytas of Tarentum, philosopher, mathematician, musician, inventor, engineer, general, statesman; and Epaminondas, the greatest and noblest of Theban generals, were professed Pythagoreans.

We might perhaps express the aim of Pythagoras' pedagogical efforts by the one word Harmony. Just as he found harmony everywhere in the physical world, so he strove to introduce the same into the constitution of the human individual, and into the relations of individuals with each other. He may perhaps be regarded as the originator of that view of the world, of men, and of society which makes all good consist in order and proportion, a view which recommends itself strongly to idealists, and has given birth to all those social Utopias, whose static perfection seems to relieve the individual from the burden of responsibility, and which have been dangled before the eyes of struggling humanity from his days to ours. According to this view, which had its roots in Greek thought generally, the aim of education is to find for each individual his true place and to make him efficient therein. Man is made for order, and not order for man. He is born into a world of order, as is shown by the fact that number and proportion are found in everything that is known. Pythagoras, in his enthusiasm for his principle, carried his doctrine of numbers to absurd lengths, identifying them with real things; but this enthusiasm was not without its valuable results, since it is to Pythagoras and his school that we owe the sciences of geometry and music. Moreover, experience must have taught him that it is one thing to propound a theory, another to make it effective in regulating human relations. In order to accomplish the latter object, he invoked the aid of divine authority and of the doctrines of metempsychosis and future retribution. Hence his educational system had a strong religious cast, which showed itself even outwardly in the dignified demeanor and quiet self-possession of his followers.

Harmony, then, to be attained by discipline, under religious sanctions, was the aim of Pythagoras' teaching. Believing, however, that only a limited number of persons were capable of such harmony, he selected his pupils with great care, and subjected them to a long novitiate, in which silence, self-examination, and absolute obedience played a prominent part. The aim of this was to enable them to overcome impulse, concentrate attention, and develop reverence, reflection, and thoughtfulness, the first conditions of all moral and intellectual excellence. While the first care was directed to their spiritual part, their bodies were by no means forgotten. Food, clothing, and exercise were all carefully regulated on hygienic and moral principles.

Regarding the details of Pythagoras' educational system we are not well informed; but the spirit and tendency of it have been embalmed for us in the so-called Golden Words, which, if not due to the pen of Pythagoras himself, certainly reach back to very near his time, and contain nothing at variance with what we otherwise know of his teaching. We insert a literal version.

In this system six things are noteworthy: (1) Its comprehensiveness, in that it takes account of man's whole nature,—body, soul, and spirit; affections, intellect, and will, and of all his relations—to gods and men, to self and nature: (2) Its aimfulness, in that it promises happiness here and blessedness hereafter, as the reward of right living: (3) Its piety, in that it everywhere recognizes the need of divine assistance: (4) Its appreciation of science, as insight into the nature and grounds of multiplicity and unity: (5) Its stress laid on right doing, as the condition of right knowing: (6) Its belief in man's divinity and perfectibility. It is curious that the poem contains no reference to the doctrine of metempsychosis, which might apparently have been appealed to as a powerful moral sanction.

That a system like that of Pythagoras, combining the religious, the mystical, the scientific, the ethical, and the social tendencies of the Hellenic mind, should have exerted a deep and abiding influence, need not surprise us. We find profound traces of it, not only in all subsequent Greek thought, but even in foreign systems, such as Essenism, whose elements were Hebrew Nazarenism and Greek Pythagoreanism. The relations between Essenism and Christianity have not yet been determined. Of the effect of Pythagoras' teaching on Epaminondas I have already spoken.