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His disciple Pythagoras greatly confirmed this opinion, who came into Italy in the reign of Tarquin the Proud; and all that country which is called Great Greece was occupied by his school, and he himself was held in high honor, and had the greatest authority; and the Pythagorean sect was for many ages after in such great credit, that all learning was believed to be confined to that name.
But the later developments were largely influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further followed here. Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its soothing and refining effects, but for the intellectual interest of its numerical relations.
When grief and pain are gaining the upperhand and I am well nigh in despair, my only help lies in remembering my friend Pythagoras, that noblest among men, and his words: 'Observe a due proportion in all things, avoid excessive joy as well as complaining grief, and seek to keep thy soul in tune and harmony like a well-toned harp." Diod.
An idea of the problems of generation and heredity is shown, together with a distinct disavowal of the doctrine of spontaneous generation a doctrine which, it may be added, remained in vogue, nevertheless, for some twenty-four hundred years after the time of Pythagoras. A remarkable analysis of mind is made, and a distinction between animal minds and the human mind is based on this analysis.
He is a type of aspiring humanity; a sweet and noble figure, moving as a dim radiance through legendary Hellas. The English reader hears his name with a smile, recalling only the mention of him, in mellow mirth, by England's greatest spirit. "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?"
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus, Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of celebrated names!
O when shall the bean related to Pythagoras, and at the same time herbs well larded with fat bacon, be set before me? O evenings, and suppers fit for gods! with which I and my friends regale ourselves in the presence of my household gods; and feed my saucy slaves with viands, of which libations have been made.
Now if a man should set these books and discourses in opposition to each other, he will find that the philosophy of the one sort suits with the Seythians, Sogdians, and Melanchlaenians, of whom Herodotus's relation is scarce believed; but the sentiments of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws and customs of the ancients Grecians.
To say nothing of the Babeufs, the Marats, and the Robespierres, who swarm in our streets and workshops, all the great reformers of antiquity live again in the most illustrious personages of our time. One is Jesus Christ, another Moses, a third Mahomet; this is Orpheus, that Plato, or Pythagoras.
It was just as true at the dawn of creation that the square described on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square described on the other two sides, as it was when Pythagoras enunciated the theorem. "Thou shall not kill," is a law written by the Divine hand amid tempest and fire, but it stands.
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