The name of Pythagoras is one of the most memorable in the records of
the human species; and his character is well worthy of the minutest
investigation. By this name we are brought at once within the limits
of history properly so called. He lived in the time of Cyrus and
Darius Hystaspes, of Croesus, of Pisistratus, of Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos, and Amasis, king of Egypt. Many hypotheses have been laid down
respecting the precise period of his birth and death; but, as it is
not to our purpose to enter into any lengthened discussions of that
sort, we will adopt at once the statement that appears to be the most
probable, which is that of Lloyd, [42] who fixes his birth about the
year before Christ 586, and his death about the year 506.
Pythagoras was a man of the most various accomplishments, and appears
to have penetrated in different directions into the depths of human
knowledge. He sought wisdom in its retreats of fairest promise, in
Egypt and other distant countries. [43] In this investigation he
employed the earlier period of his life, probably till he was forty,
and devoted the remainder to such modes of proceeding, as appeared to
him the most likely to secure the advantage of what he had acquired to
a late posterity. [44]
He founded a school, and delivered his acquisitions by oral
communication to a numerous body of followers. He divided his pupils
into two classes, the one neophytes, to whom was explained only the
most obvious and general truths, the other who were admitted into the
entire confidence of the master. These last he caused to throw their
property into a common stock, and to live together in the same place
of resort. [45] He appears to have spent the latter half of his life
in that part of Italy, called Magna Graecia, so denominated in some
degree from the numerous colonies of Grecians by whom it was planted,
and partly perhaps from the memory of the illustrious things which
Pythagoras achieved there. [46] He is said to have spread the seeds of
political liberty in Crotona, Sybaris, Metapontum, and Rhegium, and
from thence in Sicily to Tauromenium, Catana, Agrigentum and Himera.
[47] Charondas and Zaleucus, themselves famous legislators, derived
the rudiments of their political wisdom from the instructions of
Pythagoras. [48]
But this marvellous man in some way, whether from the knowlege he
received, or from his own proper discoveries, has secured to his
species benefits of a more permanent nature, and which shall outlive
the revolutions of ages, and the instability of political institutions.
He was a profound geometrician. The two theorems, that the internal
angles of every right-line triangle are equal to two right angles, [49]
and that the square of the hypothenuse of every right angled triangle
is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, [50] are
ascribed to him. 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. [51] Lastly, Pythagoras is the first person, who is known to
have taught the spherical figure of the earth, and that we have
antipodes; [52] and he propagated the doctrine that the earth is a
planet, and that the sun is the centre round which the earth and the
other planets move, now known by the name of the Copernican
system. [53]
To inculcate a pure and a simple mode of subsistence was also an
express object of pursuit to Pythagoras. He taught a total abstinence
from every thing having had the property of animal life. It has been
affirmed, as we have seen, [54] that Orpheus before him taught the
same thing. But the claim of Orpheus to this distinction is ambiguous;
while the theories and dogmas of the Samian sage, as he has frequently
been styled, were more methodically digested, and produced more
lasting and unequivocal effects. He taught temperance in all its
branches, and a resolute subjection of the appetites of the body to
contemplation and the exercises of the mind; and, by the unremitted
discipline and authority he exerted over his followers, he caused his
lessons to be constantly observed. There was therefore an edifying and
an exemplary simplicity that prevailed as far as the influence of
Pythagoras extended, that won golden opinions to his adherents at all
times that they appeared, and in all places. [55]
One revolution that Pythagoras worked, was that, whereas, immediately
before, those who were most conspicuous among the Greeks as instructors
of mankind in understanding and virtue, styled themselves sophists,
professors of wisdom, this illustrious man desired to be known only by
the appellation of a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. [56] The sophists
had previously brought their denomination into discredit and reproach,
by the arrogance of their pretensions, and the imperious way in which
they attempted to lay down the law to the world.
The modesty of this appellation however did not altogether suit with
the deep designs of Pythagoras, the ascendancy he resolved to acquire,
and the oracular subjection in which he deemed it necessary to hold
those who placed themselves under his instruction. This wonderful man
set out with making himself a model of the passive and unscrupulous
docility which he afterwards required from others. He did not begin to
teach till he was forty years of age, and from eighteen to that period
he studied in foreign countries, with the resolution to submit to all
his teachers enjoined, and to make himself master of their least
communicated and most secret wisdom. In Egypt in particular, we are
told that, though he brought a letter of recommendation from
Polycrates, his native sovereign, to Amasis, king of that country, who
fully concurred with the views of the writer, the priests, jealous of
admitting a foreigner into their secrets, baffled him as long as they
could, referring him from one college to another, and prescribing to
him the most rigorous preparatives, not excluding the rite of
circumcision. [57] But Pythagoras endured and underwent every thing,
till at length their unwillingness was conquered, and his perseverance
received its suitable reward.
When in the end Pythagoras thought himself fully qualified for the
task he had all along had in view, he was no less strict in prescribing
ample preliminaries to his own scholars. At the time that a pupil was
proposed to him, the master, we are told, examined him with multiplied
questions as to his principles, his habits and intentions, observed
minutely his voice and manner of speaking, his walk and his gestures,
the lines of his countenance, and the expression and management of his
eye, and, when he was satisfied with these, then and not till then
admitted him as a probationer. [58] It is to be supposed that all this
must have been personal. As soon however as this was over, the master
was withdrawn from the sight of the pupil; and a noviciate of three
and five, in all eight years, [59] was prescribed to the scholar,
during which time he was only to hear his instructor from behind a
curtain, and the strictest silence was enjoined him through the whole
period. As the instructions Pythagoras received in Egypt and the East
admitted of no dispute, so in his turn he required an unreserved
submission from those who heard him: autos iphae "the master has said
it," was deemed a sufficient solution to all doubt and uncertainty. [60]
To give the greater authority and effect to his communications
Pythagoras hid himself during the day at least from the great body of
his pupils, and was only seen by them at night. Indeed there is no
reason to suppose that any one was admitted into his entire
familiarity. When he came forth, he appeared in a long garment of the
purest white, with a flowing beard, and a garland upon his head. He is
said to have been of the finest symmetrical form, with a majestic
carriage, and a grave and awful countenance. [61] He suffered his
followers to believe that he was one of the Gods, the Hyperborean
Apollo, [62] and is said to have told Abaris that he assumed the human
form, that he might the better invite men to an easiness of approach
and to confidence in him. [63] What however seems to be agreed in by
all his biographers, is that he professed to have already in different
ages appeared in the likeness of man: first as Aethalides, the son of
Mercury; and, when his father expressed himself ready to invest him
with any gift short of immortality, he prayed that, as the human soul
is destined successively to dwell in various forms, he might have the
privilege in each to remember his former state of being, which was
granted him. From, Aethalides he became Euphorbus, who slew Patroclus
at the siege of Troy. He then appeared as Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus, a
fisherman of Delos, and finally Pythagoras. He said that a period of
time was interposed between each transmigration, during which he
visited the seat of departed souls; and he professed to relate a part
of the wonders he had seen. [64] He is said to have eaten sparingly
and in secret, and in all respects to have given himself out for a
being not subject to the ordinary laws of nature. [65]
Pythagoras therefore pretended to miraculous endowments. Happening to
be on the sea-shore when certain fishermen drew to land an enormous
multitude of fishes, he desired them to allow him to dispose of the
capture, which they consented to, provided he would name the precise
number they had caught. He did so, and required that they should throw
their prize into the sea again, at the same time paying them the value
of the fish. [66] He tamed a Daunian bear by whispering in his ear,
and prevailed on him henceforth to refrain from the flesh of animals,
and to feed on vegetables. By the same means he induced an ox not to
eat beans, which was a diet specially prohibited by Pythagoras; and he
called down an eagle from his flight, causing him to sit on his hand,
and submit to be stroked down by the philosopher. [67] In Greece, when
he passed the river Nessus in Macedon, the stream was heard to salute
him with the words "Hail, Pythagoras!" [68] When Abaris addressed him
as one of the heavenly host, he took the stranger aside, and convinced
him that he was under no mistake, by exhibiting to him his thigh of
gold: or, according to another account, he used the same sort of
evidence at a certain time, to satisfy his pupils of his celestial
descent. [69] He is said to have been seen on the same day at
Metapontum in Italy, and at Taurominium in Sicily, though these places
are divided by the sea, so that it was conceived that it would cost
several days to pass from one to the other. [70] In one instance he
absented himself from his associates in Italy for a whole year; and
when he appeared again, related that he had passed that time in the
infernal regions, describing likewise the marvellous things he had
seen. [71] Diogenes Laertius, speaking of this circumstance affirms
however that he remained during this period in a cave, where his
mother conveyed to him intelligence and necessaries, and that, when
he came once more into light and air, he appeared so emaciated and
colourless, that he might well be believed to have come out of Hades.
The close of the life of Pythagoras was, according to every statement,
in the midst of misfortune and violence. Some particulars are related
by Iamblichus, [72] which, though he is not an authority beyond all
exception, are so characteristic as seem to entitle them to the being
transcribed. This author is more circumstantial than any other in
stating the elaborate steps by which the pupils of Pythagoras came to
be finally admitted into the full confidence of the master. He says,
that they passed three years in the first place in a state of
probation, carefully watched by their seniors, and exposed to their
occasional taunts and ironies, by way of experiment to ascertain
whether they were of a temper sufficiently philosophical and firm. At
the expiration of that period they were admitted to a noviciate, in
which they were bound to uninterrupted silence, and heard the lectures
of the master, while he was himself concealed from their view by a
curtain. They were then received to initiation, and required to
deliver over their property to the common stock. They were admitted to
intercourse with the master. They were invited to a participation of
the most obscure theories, and the abstrusest problems. If however in
this stage of their progress they were discovered to be too weak of
intellectual penetration, or any other fundamental objection were
established against them, they were expelled the community; the double
of the property they had contributed to the common stock was paid down
to them; a head-stone and a monument inscribed with their names were
set up in the place of meeting of the community; they were considered
as dead; and, if afterwards they met by chance any of those who were
of the privileged few, they were treated by them as entirely strangers.
Cylon, the richest man, or, as he is in one place styled, the prince,
of Crotona, had manifested the greatest partiality to Pythagoras. He
was at the same time a man of rude, impatient and boisterous character.
He, together with Perialus of Thurium, submitted to all the severities
of the Pythagorean school. They passed the three years of probation,
and the five years of silence. They were received into the familiarity
of the master. They were then initiated, and delivered all their
wealth into the common stock. They were however ultimately pronounced
deficient in intellectual power, or for some other reason were not
judged worthy to continue among the confidential pupils of Pythagoras.
They were expelled. The double of the property they had contributed
was paid back to them. A monument was set up in memory of what they
had been; and they were pronounced dead to the school.
It will easily be conceived in what temper Cylon sustained this
degradation. Of Perialus we hear nothing further. But Cylon, from
feelings of the deepest reverence and awe for Pythagoras, which he had
cherished for years, was filled even to bursting with inextinguishable
hatred and revenge. The unparalleled merits, the venerable age of the
master whom he had so long followed, had no power to control his
violence. His paramount influence in the city insured him the command
of a great body of followers. He excited them to a frame of turbulence
and riot. He represented to them how intolerable was the despotism of
this pretended philosopher. They surrounded the school in which the
pupils were accustomed to assemble, and set it on fire. Forty persons
perished in the flames. [73] According to some accounts Pythagoras was
absent at the time. According to others he and two of his pupils
escaped. He retired from Crotona to Metapontum. But the hostility
which had broken out in the former city, followed him there. He took
refuge in the Temple of the Muses. But he was held so closely besieged
that no provisions could be conveyed to him; and he finally perished
with hunger, after, according to Laertius, forty days' abstinence. [74]
It is difficult to imagine any thing more instructive, and more
pregnant with matter for salutary reflection, than the contrast
presented to us by the character and system of action of Pythagoras
on the one hand, and those of the great enquirers of the last two
centuries, for example, Bacon, Newton and Locke, on the other.
Pythagoras probably does not yield to any one of these in the
evidences of true intellectual greatness. In his school, in the
followers he trained resembling himself, and in the salutary effects
he produced on the institutions of the various republics of Magna
Graecia and Sicily, he must be allowed greatly to have excelled them.
His discoveries of various propositions in geometry, of the earth as
a planet, and of the solar system as now universally recognised,
clearly stamp him a genius of the highest order.
Yet this man, thus enlightened and philanthropical, established his
system of proceeding upon narrow and exclusive principles, and
conducted it by methods of artifice, quackery and delusion. One of his
leading maxims was, that the great and fundamental truths to the
establishment of which he devoted himself, were studiously to be
concealed from the vulgar, and only to be imparted to a select few,
and after years of the severest noviciate and trial. He learned his
earliest lessons of wisdom in Egypt after this method, and he
conformed through life to the example which had thus been delivered to
him. The severe examination that he made of the candidates previously
to their being admitted into his school, and the years of silence that
were then prescribed to them, testify this. He instructed them by
symbols, obscure and enigmatical propositions, which they were first
to exercise their ingenuity to expound. The authority and dogmatical
assertions of the master were to remain unquestioned; and the pupils
were to fashion themselves to obsequious and implicit submission, and
were the furthest in the world from being encouraged to the independent
exercise of their own understandings. There was nothing that Pythagoras
was more fixed to discountenance, than the communication of the truths
upon which he placed the highest value, to the uninitiated. It is not
probable therefore that he wrote any thing: all was communicated
orally, by such gradations, and with such discretion, as he might
think fit to adopt and to exercise.
Delusion and falsehood were main features of his instruction. With
what respect therefore can we consider, and what manliness worthy of
his high character and endowments can we impute to, his discourses
delivered from behind a curtain, his hiding himself during the day,
and only appearing by night in a garb assumed for the purpose of
exciting awe and veneration? What shall we say to the story of his
various transmigrations? At first sight it appears in the light of the
most audacious and unblushing imposition. And, if we were to yield so
far as to admit that by a high-wrought enthusiasm, by a long train of
maceration and visionary reveries, he succeeded in imposing on himself,
this, though in a different way, would scarcely less detract from the
high stage of eminence upon which the nobler parts of his character
would induce us to place him.
Such were some of the main causes that have made his efforts
perishable, and the lustre which should have attended his genius in a
great degree transitory and fugitive. He was probably much under the
influence of a contemptible jealousy, and must be considered as
desirous that none of his contemporaries or followers should eclipse
their master. All was oracular and dogmatic in the school of
Pythagoras. He prized and justly prized the greatness of his
attainments and discoveries, and had no conception that any thing
could go beyond them. He did not encourage, nay, he resolutely opposed,
all true independence of mind, and that undaunted spirit of enterprise
which is the atmosphere in which the sublimest thoughts are most
naturally generated. He therefore did not throw open the gates of
science and wisdom, and invite every comer; but on the contrary
narrowed the entrance, and carefully reduced the number of aspirants.
He thought not of the most likely methods to give strength and
permanence and an extensive sphere to the progress of the human mind.
For these reasons he wrote nothing; but consigned all to the frail and
uncertain custody of tradition. And distant posterity has amply
avenged itself upon the narrowness of his policy; and the name of
Pythagoras, which would otherwise have been ranked with the first
luminaries of mankind, and consigned to everlasting gratitude, has in
consequence of a few radical and fatal mistakes, been often loaded
with obloquy, and the hero who bore it been indiscriminately classed
among the votaries of imposture and artifice.