“A GREATER good never came, nor ever will come, to mankind, than that which was imparted by the gods through Pythagoras.” Such is the expression of enthusiastic admiration of one of his biographers. To those who are unacquainted with the historical development of Greek thought and Greek philosophy it may seem to be merely the utterance of the partiality of hero-worship. Those, on the other hand, who know anything of that most important history, and of the influence, direct or indirect, of Pythagoras upon the most intellectual and earnest minds of his countrymen—in particular upon Plato and his followers, and through them upon the later Jewish and upon very early Christian ideas—will acknowledge, at least, that the name of the prophet of Samos is that of one of the most important and influential factors in the production and progress of higher human thought.

There is a true and there is a false hero-worship. The latter, whatever it may have done to preserve the blind and unreasoning subservience of mankind, has not tended to accelerate the progress of the world towards the attainment of truth. The old-world occupants of the popular Pantheon—“the patrons of mankind, gods and sons of gods, destroyers rightlier called and plagues of men”—are indeed fast losing, if they have not entirely lost, their ancient credit, but their vacant places have yet to be filled by the representatives of the most exalted ideals of humanity. Whenever, in the place of the representatives of mere physical and mental force, the true heroes shall be enthroned, amongst the moral luminaries and pioneers who have contributed to lessen the thick darkness of ignorance, barbarism, and selfishness, the name of the first western apostle of humanitarianism and of spiritualism must assume a prominent position.

It is a natural and legitimate curiosity which leads us to wish to know, with something of certainty and fulness, the outer and inner life of the master spirits of our race. Unfortunately, the personality of many of the most interesting and illustrious of them is of a vague and shadowy kind. But when we reflect that little more is known of the personal life of Shakspere than of that of Pythagoras or Plato—not to mention other eminent names—our surprise is lessened that, in an age long preceding the discovery of printing, the records of a life even so important and influential as that of the founder of Pythagoreanism are meagre and scanty.

The earliest account of his teaching is given by Philolaus (“Lover of the People,” an auspicious name) of Tarentum, who, born about forty or fifty years after the death of his master—was thus contemporary with Sokrates and Plato. His Pythagorean System, in three books, was so highly esteemed by Plato that he is said to have given £400 or £500 for a copy, and to have incorporated the principal part of it in his TimÆus. Sharing the fate of so many other valuable products of the Greek genius, it has long since perished. Our remaining authorities for the Life are Diogenes of Laerte, Porphyry, one of the most erudite writers of any age, and Iamblichus. Of these, the biography of the last is the fullest, if not the most critical; that of Porphyry wants the beginning and the end; whilst of the ten books of Iamblichus On the Pythagorean Sect (?e?? ???a????? ????se??), of which only five remain, the first was devoted to the life of the founder. Diogenes, who seems to have been of the school of Epikurus, belongs to the second, while Porphyry and Iamblichus, the well-known exponents of Neo-Platonism, wrote in the third and fourth centuries of our era.

Pythagoras was born in the Island of Samos, somewhere about the year 570 B.C. At some period in his youth, Polykrates—celebrated by the fine story of Herodotus—had acquired the tyranny of Samos, and his rule, like that of most of his compeers, has deserved the stigma of the modern meaning of the Greek equivalent for princely and monarchical government. The future philosopher, we are told, unable to descend to the ordinary arts of sycophancy and dissimulation, left his country, and entered, like the Sirian philosopher of Voltaire, upon an extensive course of travels—extensive for the age in which he lived. How far he actually travelled is uncertain. He visited Egypt, the great nurse of the old-world science, and Syria, and it is not impossible that he may have penetrated eastwards as far as Babylon, perhaps as the captive of the recent conqueror of Egypt—the Persian Kambyses. It was in the East, and particularly in Egypt, that he probably imbibed the dogma of the immortality of the soul, or, as he chose to represent it to the public, that of the metempsychosis—a fancy widely spread in the eastern theologies.

It has been asserted that he had already abandoned the orthodox diet at the age of nineteen or twenty. If this was actually the fact, he has the additional merit of having adopted the higher life by his own original force of mind and refinement of feeling. If not, he may have derived the most characteristic as well as the most important of his teachings from the Egyptians or Persians, or, through them, even from the Hindus—the most religiously strict abstainers from the flesh of animals. It is remarkable that the two great apostles of abstinence—Pythagoras and Sakya-Muni, or Buddha—were almost contemporaries; nor is it impossible that the Greek may, in whatever way, have become acquainted with the sublime tenets of the Hindu prophet, who had lately seceded from Brahminism, the established sacerdotal and exclusive religion of the Peninsula, and promulgated his great revelation—until then new to the world—that religion, at least his religion, was to be “a religion of mercy to all beings,” human and non-human.[7]

As the natural and necessary result of his pure living, we are told by Iamblichus that “his sleep was brief, his soul vigilant and pure, and his body confirmed in a state of perfect and invariable health.” He appears to have passed the period of middle life when he returned to Samos, where his reputation had preceded him. Either, however, finding his countrymen hopelessly debased by the corrupting influence of despotism, or believing that he would find a better field for the propagandism of his new revelation, he not long afterwards set out for Southern Italy, then known as “Great Greece,” by reason of its numerous Greek colonies, or, rather, autonomous communities. At Krotona his fame and eloquence soon attracted, it seems, a select if not numerous auditory; and there he founded his famous society—the first historical anti-flesh-eating association in the western world—the prototype, in some respects, of the ascetic establishments of Greek and Catholic Christendom. It consisted of about three hundred young men belonging to the most influential families of the city and neighbourhood.

It was the practice of the Egyptian priestly caste and of other exclusive institutions to reserve their better ideas (of a more satisfactory sort, at all events, than the system of theology that was promulgated to the mass of the community), into which only privileged persons were initiated. This esoteric method, which under the name of the mysteries has exercised the learned ingenuity of modern writers—who have, for the most part, vainly laboured to penetrate the obscurity enveloping the most remarkable institution of the Hellenic theology—was accompanied with the strictest vows and circumstances of silence and secrecy. As for the priestly order, it was their evident policy to maintain the superstitious ignorance of the people and to overawe their minds, while in regard to the philosophic sects, it was perhaps to shield themselves from the priestly or popular suspicion that they shrouded their scepticism in this dark and convenient disguise. The parabolic or esoteric method was, perhaps, almost a necessity of the earlier ages. It is to be lamented that it should be still in favour in this safer age, and that the old exclusiveness of the mysteries is in esteem with many modern authorities, who seem to hold that to unveil the spotless Truth to the multitude is “to cast pearls before swine.”

It was probably from the philosophic motive that the founder of the new society instituted his grades of catechumens and probationary course, as well as vows of the strictest secrecy. The exact nature of all his interior instruction is necessarily very much matter of conjecture, inasmuch as, whether he committed his system to writing or not, nothing from his own hand has come down to us. However this may be, it is evident that the general spirit and characteristic of his teaching was self-denial or self-control, founded upon the great principles of justice and temperance; and that communism and asceticism were the principal aim of his sociology. He was the founder of communism in the West—his communistic ideas, however, being of an aristocratic and exclusive rather than of a democratic and cosmopolitan kind. “He first taught,” says Diogenes, “that the property of friends was to be held in common—that friendship is equality—and his disciples laid down their money and goods at his feet, and had all things common.”

The moral precepts of the great master were much in advance of the conventional morality of the day. He enjoined upon his disciples, the same biographer informs us, each time they entered their houses to interrogate themselves—“How have I transgressed? What have I done? What have I left undone that I ought to have done?” He exhorted them to live in perfect harmony, to do good to their enemies and by kindness to convert them into friends. “He forbade them either to pray for themselves, seeing that they were ignorant of what was best for them; or to offer slain victims (sfa??a) as sacrifices; and taught them to respect a bloodless altar only.” Cakes and fruits, and other innocent offerings were the only sacrifices he would allow. This, and the sublime commandment “Not to kill or injure any innocent animal,” are the grand distinguishing doctrines of his moral religion. So far did he carry his respect for the beautiful and beneficent in Nature, that he specially prohibited wanton injury to cultivated and useful trees and plants.

By confining themselves to the innocent, pure, and spiritual dietary he promised his followers the enjoyment of health and equanimity, undisturbed and invigorating sleep, as well as a superiority of mental and moral perceptions. As for his own diet, “he was satisfied,” says Porphyry, “with honey or the honeycomb, or with bread only, and he did not taste wine from morning to night (e?’?e?a?); or his principal dish was often kitchen herbs, cooked or uncooked. Fish he ate rarely.”

Humanitarianism—the extension of the sublime principles of justice and of compassion to all innocent sentient life, irrespective of nationality, creed, or species—is a very modern and even now very inadequately recognised creed; and, although there have been here and there a few, like Plutarch and Seneca, who were “splendidly false,” to the spirit of their age, the recognition of the obligation (the practice has always been a very different thing) of benevolence and beneficence, so far from being extended to the non-human races, until a comparatively recent time has been limited to the narrow bounds of country and citizenship; and patriotism and internationalism are, apparently, two very opposite principles.

The obligation to abstain from the flesh of animals was founded by Pythagoras on mental and spiritual rather than on humanitarian grounds. Yet that the latter were not ignored by the prophet of akreophagy is evident equally by his prohibition of the infliction of pain, no less than of death, upon the lower animals, and by his injunction to abstain from the bloody sacrifices of the altar. Such was his abhorrence of the Slaughter-House, Porphyry tells us, that not only did he carefully abstain from the flesh of its victims, but that he could never bring himself to endure contact with, or even the sight of, butchers and cooks.

While thus careful of the lives and feelings of the innocent non-human races, he recognised the necessity of making war upon the ferocious carnivora. Yet to such a degree had he become familiar with the habits and dispositions of the lower animals that he is said, by the exclusive use of vegetable food, not only to have tamed a formidable bear, which by its devastations on their crops had become the terror of the country people, but even to have accustomed it to eat that food only for the remainder of its life. The story may be true or fictitious, but it is not incredible; for there are well-authenticated instances, even in our own times, of true carnivora that have been fed, for longer or shorter periods, upon the non-flesh diet.[8]

“Amongst other reasons, Pythagoras,” says Iamblichus, “enjoined abstinence from the flesh of animals because it is conducive to peace. For those who are accustomed to abominate the slaughter of other animals, as iniquitous and unnatural, will think it still more unjust and unlawful to kill a man or to engage in war.” Specially, he “exhorted those politicians who are legislators to abstain. For if they were willing to act justly in the highest degree, it was indubitably incumbent upon them not to injure any of the lower animals. Since how could they persuade others to act justly, if they themselves were proved to be indulging an insatiable avidity by devouring these animals that are allied to us. For through the communion of life and the same elements, and the sympathy thus existing, they are, as it were, conjoined to us by a fraternal alliance.”[9] Maxims how different from those in favour in the present “year of grace,” 1877! If the refined thinker of the sixth century B.C. were now living, what would be his indignation at the enormous slaughter of innocent life for the public banquets at which our statesmen and others are constantly fÊted, and which are recorded in our journals with so much magniloquence and minuteness? His hopes for the regeneration of his fellow-men would surely be terribly shattered. We may apply the words of the great Latin satirist, Juvenal, who so frequently denounces in burning language the luxurious gluttony of his countrymen under the Empire—“What would not Pythagoras denounce, or whither would he not flee, could he see these monstrous sights—he who abstained from the flesh of all other animals as though they were human?” (Satire xv.)

How long the communistic society of Krotona remained undisturbed is uncertain. Inasmuch as its reputation and influence were widely spread, it may be supposed that the outbreak of the populace (the origin of which is obscure), by which the society was broken up and his disciples massacred, did not happen until many years after its establishment. At all events, it is commonly believed that Pythagoras lived to an advanced age, variously computed at eighty, ninety, or one hundred years.

It is not within our purpose to discuss minutely the scientific or theological theories of Pythagoras. In accordance with the abstruse speculative character of the Ionic school of science, which inclined to refer the origin of the universe to some one primordial principle, he was led by his mathematical predilections to discover the cosmic element in numbers, or proportion—a theory which savours of John Dalton’s philosophy, now accepted in chemistry, and a virtual enunciation of what we now call quantitative science. Pythagoras taught the Kopernican theory prematurely. He regarded the sun as more divine than the earth, and therefore set it in the centre of the earth and planets. The argument was surely a mark of genius, but it was too transcendental for his contemporaries, even for Plato and Aristotle. His elder contemporary, the celebrated Thales of Miletus, with whom in his early youth he may have been acquainted, may claim, indeed, to be the remote originator of the famous nebular hypothesis of Laplace and modern astronomy. Another cardinal doctrine of the Pythagorean school was the musical, from whence the idea, so popular with the poets, of the “music of the spheres.” To music was attributed the greatest influence in the control of the passions. In its larger sense, by the Greeks generally, the term “Music” (Musice—pertaining to the Muses) denoted, it is to be remembered, not alone the “concord of sweet sounds,” but also an artistic and Æsthetic education in general—all humanising and refining instruction.

The famous doctrine of the Metempsychosis or Transmigration of Souls also was, doubtless, a prominent feature in the Pythagorean system; but it is probable that we may presume that by it Pythagoras intended merely to convey to the “uninstructed,” by parable, the sublime idea that the soul is gradually purified by a severe course of discipline until finally it becomes fitted for a fleshless life of immortality.[10] We are chiefly concerned with his attitude in regard to flesh eating. There can be no question that abstinence was a fundamental part of his system, yet certain modern critics—little in sympathy with so practical a manifestation of the higher life, or, indeed, with self-denial of any kind—have sometimes affected either to doubt the fact or to pass it by in contemptuous silence, thus ignoring what for the after ages stands out as by far the most important residuum of Pythagoreanism. In support of this scepticism the fact of the celebrated athlete Milo, whose prodigies of strength have become proverbial, has been quoted. Yet if these critics had been at the pains of inquiring somewhat further, they would have learned, on the contrary, that the non-flesh diet is exactly that which is most conducive to physical vigour; that in the East there are at this day non-flesh eaters, who in feats of strength might put even our strongest men to the blush. The extraordinary powers of the porters and boatmen of Constantinople have been remarked by many travellers; and the Chinese coolies and others are almost equally notorious for their marvellous powers of endurance. Yet their food is not only of the simplest—rice, dhourra (i.e., millet), onions, &c.—but of the scantiest possible. Moreover, the elder Greek athletes themselves, for the most part, trained on vegetarian diet. Not to multiply details, the fact that, upon a moderate calculation, two-thirds at least of the population of our globe—including the mass of the inhabitants of these islands—live, nolentes, volentes, on a dietary from which flesh is almost altogether necessarily excluded, is on the face of it sufficient proof in itself of the non-necessity of the diet of the rich.

While the general consent of antiquity and of later times has received as undoubted the obligation of strict abstinence on the part of the immediate followers of Pythagoras, it seems that as regards the uninitiated, or (to use the ecclesiastical term) catechumens, the obligation was not so strict. Indeed relaxation of the rules of the higher life was simply a sine qu non of securing the attention of the mass of the community at all; and, like one still more eminent than himself in an after age, he found it a matter of necessity to present a teaching and a mode of living not too exalted and unattainable by the grossness and “hardness of heart” of the multitude. Hence, in all probability, the seeming contradictions in his teaching on this point found in the narratives of his followers.

If his critics had been more intent on discovering the excellence of his rules of abstinence than on discussing, with frivolous diligence, the probable or possible reasons of his alleged prohibition of beans, it would have redounded more to their credit for wisdom and love of truth. Assuming the fact of the prohibition, in place of collecting all the most absurd gossip of antiquity, they might perhaps have found a more rational and more solid reason in the hypothesis that the bean being, as used in the ballot, a symbol and outward and visible sign of political life, was employed by Pythagoras parabolically to dissuade his followers from participating in the idle strife of party faction, and to exhort them to concentrate their efforts upon an attempt to achieve the solid and lasting reformation of mankind.[11] But to be much concerned in a patient inquiry after truth unhappily has been not always the characteristic of professional commentators.

Blind hero-worship or idolatry of genius or intellect, even when directed to high moral aims, is no part of our creed; and it is sufficient to be assured that he was human, to be free to confess that the historical founder of akreophagy was not exempt from human infirmity, and that he could not wholly rise above the wonder-loving spirit of an uncritical age. Deducting all that has been imputed to him of the fanciful or fantastic, enough still remains to force us to recognise in the philosopher-prophet of Samos one of the master-spirits of the world.[12]