United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When two bodies combine into one substance, it always happens that a certain definite quantity of the one body, expressible in numbers, combines with a certain definite quantity of the other. The Pythagoreans' sense of observation was directed to such arrangements of measures and numbers in nature. Geometrical figures also play a similar rôle.
Could they have been united in a powerful federation by the aid of some political or religious bond, they might have exerted a singular influence on the rising fortunes of Rome, and thereby on humanity. The fundamental dogma of the Pythagoreans was that "number is the essence or first principle of things."
Regarding the opinions of the ancients on the subject of the eternity of matter, Higgins, in his learned work on Celtic Druids, says: "The eternity of matter is a well known tenet of the Pythagoreans, and whether right or wrong there can be no doubt that it was the doctrine of the oriental school, whence Pythagoras drew his learning.
Aristotle usually starts with 'We say thus or thus. So, with the Doctrine of Contrarieties, in which the Pythagoreans and others assumed that oppositions in language imply similar ones in nature. Hence, too, the ancient belief in the essential difference between the laws of things terrestrial and things celestial, and in man's incapability of imitating nature's works.
This series, of which the intervals are afterwards filled up, probably represents the diatonic scale according to the Pythagoreans and Plato; the order and distances of the heavenly bodies; and may possibly contain an allusion to the music of the spheres, which is referred to in the myth at the end of the Republic.
The Ionian philosophers had speculated on the physical constitution of the universe, the Pythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus had propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus had struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked them out.
You may talk of your Pythagoreans or your silent Brahmins, Colonel; go to, I tell you this learned gentleman beats them all in taciturnity; but the words of the wise are precious, and not to be thrown away lightly.
Ten is magnified so as to honor the Decalogue, fifty so as to honor the Feast of Pentecost. So, too, the Pythagoreans' mathematical conceptions of God as "the beginning and limit of all things," or, again, as the principle of equality, are approved by Philo, "because they breed in the soul the fairest and most nourishing fruit piety."
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn or skims along the main." Essay on Criticism. The teachings of Anchises to Aeneas, respecting the nature of the human soul, were in conformity with the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. He is therefore sometimes called "the Samian," and sometimes "the philosopher of Crotona."
It is a cloudy circle, which continually appears in the air, and by reason of the whiteness of its colors is called the galaxy, or the milky way. Some of the Pythagoreans say that, when Phaeton set the world on fire, a star falling from its own place in its circular passage through the region caused an inflammation.
Word Of The Day