This adaptation therefore of souls was procured by him through music.
But another purification of the dianoetic part,[18] and at the same time
of the whole soul, through all-various studies, was effected by him as
follows: He conceived generally that labor should be employed about
disciplines and studies, and ordained like a legislator, trials of the
most various nature, punishments, and restraints by fire and sword, for
innate intemperance, and an inexhaustible avidity of possessing; which
he who is depraved can neither suffer nor sustain. Besides these things
also, he ordered his familiars to abstain from all animals, and farther
still from certain foods, which are hostile to the reasoning power, and
impede its genuine energies. He likewise enjoined them continence of
speech, and perfect silence, exercising them for many years in the
subjugation of the tongue, and in a strenuous and assiduous
investigation and resumption of the most difficult theorems. Hence also,
he ordered them to abstain from wine, to be sparing in their food, to
sleep little, and to have an unstudied contempt of, and hostility to
glory, wealth, and the like: to have an unfeigned reverence of those to
whom reverence is due, a genuine similitude and benevolence to those of
the same age with themselves, and an attention and incitation towards
their juniors, free from all envy. With respect to the amity also which
subsists in all things towards all, whether it be that of Gods towards
men through piety and scientific theory, or of dogmas towards each
other, or universally of the soul towards the body, and of the rational
towards the irrational part, through philosophy, and the theory
pertaining to it; or whether it be that of men to each other, of
citizens indeed through sound legislation, but of strangers through a
correct physiology; or of the husband to the wife, or of brothers and
kindred, through unperverted communion; or whether, in short, it be of
all things towards all, and still farther, of certain irrational animals
through justice, and a physical connexion and association; or whether it
be the pacification and conciliation of the body which is of itself
mortal, and of its latent contrary powers, through health, and a diet
and temperance conformable to this, in imitation of the salubrious
condition of the mundane elements;—of the appellation of all these,
which are summarily comprehended in one and the same name, that of
friendship, Pythagoras is acknowledged to have been the inventor and
legislator. And, in short, he was the cause to his disciples of the most
appropriate converse with the Gods, both when they were awake and when
asleep; a thing which never takes place in a soul disturbed by anger, or
pain, or pleasure, or, by Jupiter, by any other base desire, or defiled
by ignorance, which is more unholy and noxious than all these. By all
these inventions, therefore, he divinely healed and purified the soul,
resuscitated and saved its divine part, and conducted to the
intelligible its divine eye, which, as Plato says, is better worth
saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes; for by looking through this
alone, when it is strengthened and clarified by appropriate aids, the
truth pertaining to all beings is perceived. Referring therefore to
this, Pythagoras purified the dianoetic power of the soul. Such also was
the form with him of erudition, and these were the things to which he
directed his view.