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To explain Percy Bysshe Shelley, by telling us he was inconsequent, absurd, and odd in his manners, is as futile as to explain him by saying he was a strange, wonderful genius, of the Platonic or Pythagorean order, always soaring above the atmosphere of common men. To call a man of genius an inspired idiot or an inspired oddity is an easy, but false way of interpreting him.
Are you not even a jay? "'I am not, I said, watching him suspiciously. "'I must convert you, I see, said the professor, smiling. "'I'm afraid I do not approve of Pythagorean research, I began, but the beautiful Miss Wyeth turned to me very seriously, and, looking me frankly in the eyes, said: "'I trust you will be open to conviction. "'Good Lord! I thought.
Cholmondeley said, was first talkative from affectation, and then silent from the same cause; that he first thought, 'I shall be celebrated as the liveliest man in every company; and then, all at once, 'O! it is much more respectable to be grave and look wise. 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by being first talkative, and then silent.
Another Pythagorean philosopher whom he admired and whom he quotes was Sextius, from whom he learnt the admirable practice of daily self-examination: "When the day was over, and he betook himself to his nightly rest, he used to ask himself, What evil have you cured to day? What vice have you resisted? In what particular have you improved?"
"It is an allegory," replied the Pythagorean, "and simply means that we are innocent so long as we are young, and that when we come to maturity we are corrupted and depraved by our passions." "How the sorra can you say that," replied the friar, "when you know that Adam and Eve were created full-grown?"
Omega is already potential in Alpha, just as in the Pythagorean system all numbers are said to proceed from unity and to be resolvable back again into it.
In memory of the latter of these discoveries he is said to have offered a public sacrifice to the Gods; and the theorem is still known by the name of the Pythagorean theorem. He ascertained from the length of the Olympic course, which was understood to have measured six hundred of Hercules's feet, the precise stature of that hero.
It had learnt the necessity of appealing to men's hearts rather than convincing their intellects. It had become a system of persuasion. Fabianus was the first who clearly proposed to himself, as an end, to gain over the affections or to arouse the conscience. He was succeeded, under Tiberius, by Sotion the Pythagorean and Attalus the Stoic, of both of whom Seneca had been an ardent pupil.
With him were a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean, a Platonist, and a doctor, who began to tell stories so absurd and abounding in such monstrous superstition that he ended by leaving them in disgust.
We are told that on several occasions he hindered insurrections in the cities in which he resided by the mute eloquence of his look and gestures; but such an achievement is hardly consistent with the Pythagorean rule, which forbad its disciples during their silence the intercourse of mixed society.
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