Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
They ought to reward virtue and punish vice; and they are no better than corruptible judges; for you know beforehand just what and how much will avail to purchase their favors." "You paint with dark colors," the girl broke in. "I have learned from Philip that the Pythagoreans teach that not the sacrifice, but the spirit of the offering, is what really matters." "Quite right.
Melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ever will be. Plato thinks that the world has always existed, while the Pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics. "Your wise man," continues Cicero, "will know one whom to choose out of all these. Let the others, who have been repudiated, retire."
"I imagine that among our friends, the Pompeians, there is plenty, and more to spare. Mehercle, I feel that we must storm their camp just to get something worth drinking. But I would stake my best villa that you have not been so gloomy for mere lack of victuals, unless you have just joined the Pythagoreans, and have taken a vow not to eat fish or beans."
Adopting the Egyptian doctrine of transmigration, the Pythagoreans coupled it with the notion of future punishment or reward. Much of the doctrinal morality of Pythagoras is admirable; but it is vitiated by the ceremonial quackery connected with it.
Justice and truth became therefore paramount virtues, to be practiced, to be sought as the great end of life, allied with the order of the universe, and with mathematical essences the attributes of the deity, the sublime unity which he adored. The Ionic philosophers, and the Pythagoreans, sought to find the nature or first principle of all things in the elements, or in numbers.
The Pythagoreans again had framed a world out of numbers, which they constructed into figures. Plato adopted their speculations and improved upon them by a more exact knowledge of geometry. The Atomists too made the world, if not out of geometrical figures, at least out of different forms of atoms, and these atoms resembled the triangles of Plato in being too small to be visible.
Many philosophical sects, and especially the Pythagoreans, had forbidden such sacrifices, and had enjoined the bringing of offerings not to purchase good fortune, but only to honor the gods; and now they saw the Christians not making any offerings at all, but sharing a love-feast.
They have gardens of many acres extent, but not like those of Adonis or Alcinoüs; for nothing delightful is to be expected in them, neither order, nor regularity of walk, nor grass-plots, nor variety of flowers in the borders: but you will find all planted with cabbages, turnips, garlick, and musk-melons, which were carried hence to Italy, and are in quantity sufficient to feast an hundred Pythagoreans.
"Paralus often said that the Persian Magii, the Egyptian priests, and the Pythagoreans imbibed their reverence for light from one common source," rejoined Philothea. Anaxagoras was about to speak, when a deep but gentle voice, from some invisible person near them, said: "The unchangeable principles of Truth act upon the soul like the sun upon the eye, when it turneth to him.
They have but one book, which they call Wisdom, and in it all the sciences are written with conciseness and marvellous fluency of expression. This they read to the people after the custom of the Pythagoreans.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking