after the same manner also that divine man prepared the souls of those that were lovers of philosophy, so that they might not deceive him in any of those beautiful and good qualities which he hoped they would possess."

one

Pythagoras was one that did not "infuse theorems and divine doctrine into confused and turbid manners. Just as if some should pour pure and clear water into a deep well full of mud; for he would disturb the mud, and destroy the clear water. A similar thing likewise takes place between those who teach and those who are taught after this manner. For dense thickets and full of briars surround the intellect and heart of those who have not been purely initiated in disciplines, obscure the mild, tranquil, and reasoning power of the soul, and openly impede the intellective part from becoming increased and elevated."

The disciples, as admitted, were divided into classes, as men are naturally dissimilar. They were led into all the paths of erudition which his genius and experience had opened to Pythagoras. But he was not merely an intellectual teacher; he was a "healer of souls," possessing an almost magical influence and power of attracting friendship, and wherever he found anyone having any community of symbolic understanding with him

self, he at once strove to make a companion of him. With the members of his college he was like an intimate companion of lofty speech and gentle dignified manners, and the evident unselfishness of his purpose, with his devotion to his ideal, that of the formation of excellent men, must have exercised a rare charm.

The morning was begun by music, and in the community it was realised that music may be of evil tendency or good, of perturbing or

tranquillising, awakening or soothing effect according to its quality. Music appears to have been regarded as an influence equally affecting body and mind; rhythms, melodies, and incantations were an enchantment by which to treat both psychical and corporeal passions. "The disciples performed their morning walks alone, and in places where there happened to be an appropriate solitude and quiet, and where there were temples and groves, and other things adapted to give delight. They thought it was not proper to converse with anyone till they had rendered their own soul sedate, and had coharmonised the reasoning power. They apprehended it to be disorderly to mingle in a crowd as soon as they rose from bed. On this account all the Pythagoreans always selected for themselves the most sacred places. After their morning walk they associated with each other, and especially in temples, or, if this was not possible, in places that resembled them. This time, likewise, they employed in the discussion of doctrines and disciplines, and in the correction of their manners." They seem to have realised the influence of a sort of cathedral awe, and of the elevating effect of noble and poetic surroundings. But they did not remain in meditation only; "after an association of the kind described, they turned their attention to the health of the body. Most of them used unction and the course; a less number employed themselves in wrestling in gardens and groves; others in leaping with leaden weights in their hands; others in mimetic gesticulations, with a view to the strength of the body, studiously selecting for this purpose opposite exercises. Their dinner consisted of bread and honey or the honey-comb; they did not drink wine during the day."

After their meal, the students turned to more external work, such as administrative details and the reception of guests. In the evening they grouped themselves into walking parties, for discussion and mutual improvement. After the walk came the bath, and after this they assembled ten together for certain religious rites. Then they took supper, which was finished before sunset. Their food was simple-wine, bread, and boiled herbs or fresh salads, with certain kinds only of animal meats. They were as careful not to injure the higher varieties of plants as the useful orders of animals; and were specially trained to avoid certain flatulent and noxious foods, particularly such as are "an impediment to prophecy, or to the purity and chastity of the soul, or to the habit of temperance, or of virtue.'

Pythagoras "rejected all such things as are adverse to sanctity, and obscure and disturb the other purities of the soul, and the phantasms which occur in sleep." It will be observed that the value of this discipline rests on the faith that, when the body is brought into the best and purest state, mystical senses and consciousness, or spiritual gifts, will be found to be opened normally.

After supper, the eldest of the group fixed some passage for reading, and the youngest read it aloud. Music closed the day, as it had begun it. As Iamblichos puts it, in a somewhat high-flown way, "In the evening, when his disciples were retiring to sleep, he liberated them by these means (appropriate medicine of melody) from the day's disturbances, and purified their intellective power from the influxive and effluxive waves of a corporeal nature; rendered their sleep quiet, and their dreams pleasing and prophetic."

Pythagoras seems to have had

a science of music, viewed as purification. Certain melodies disposed the circle which joined in them to elegance and orderly manners; others were remedies against despondency; others against rage, anger, desire. The lyre, rather than the pipe, he deemed the true instrument for his purpose. But there is a story of his making the pipe useful in a wonderful way. It is said that once, "through the spondaic song of a piper, he extinguished the rage of a Tauromenian lad, who had been feasting by night, and intended to burn the vestibule of his mistress, in consequence of seeing her coming from the house of his rival. For the lad was inflamed and excited to distraction by a Phrygian song, which, however, Pythagoras promptly suppressed. He was astronomising, and happened to meet with the piper at an unseasonable time of night, and persuaded him to change his Phrygian for a spondaic song, through which the fury of the lad being immediately repressed, he returned home in an orderly manner; though shortly before he could not be in the least restrained, and would bear no admonition; and even stupidly insulted Pythagoras when he met him." The Phrygian music, if we are to judge by what Catullus tells of the Galli, must have been maddening, and was probably akin to the frenzied chorus of the devil-priests in oriental countries.

It was doubtless the personal presence of Pythagoras, as much as any musical charm, which acted as a gentle corrective of the disturbed moods of the members of his college. "By his later disciples," says G. H. Lewes, "he was venerated as a god. He who could transcend all earthly struggles, and the great ambitions of the greatest men, to live only for the sake of wisdom, was he not

of a higher stamp than ordinary mortals? Well might later historians picture him as clothed in robes of white, his head crowned with gold, his aspect grave, majestical, and calm; above the manifestations of any human joy, of any human sorrow; enwrapt in contemplation of the deeper mysteries of existence; listening to music and the hymns of Homer, Hesiod, and Thales, or listening to the harmony of the spheres. And to a lively, talkative, quibbling, active, versatile people like the Greeks, what a grand phenomenon must this solemn, earnest, silent, meditative man have appeared."

That a man's ears should catch the music of the spheres as they circle round in their grand harmonious courses sounds like a rare piece of poetic hyperbole; but Simplicius not only asserts it as a fact, but gravely argues for it, giving reasons: "A harmonic sound is produced from the motion of the celestial bodies, which may be scientifically collected from the analogy of their intervals." Jupiter, we must presume,* played the bass, and Mars a warlike tenor, the shrill chorus of asteroids not having then made itself manifest. With regard to this faculty of Pythagoras, Simplicius argues as follows: "Perhaps the objection of Aristotle to this assertion of the Pythagoreans may be solved according to the philosophy of those men, as follows: all things are not commensurate with each other, nor is everything sensible to everything, even in the sublunary region. This is evident from dogs who scent animals at a great distance which are not smelt by men. How

much more, therefore, in things which are separated by SO great an interval as those which are incorruptible from the cor

ears.

ruptible, and celestial from terrestrial nature, is it true to say, that the sound of divine bodies is not audible by terrestrial But if anyone like Pythagoras should have his terrestrial body exempt from him, and his luminous and celestial vehicle and the senses which it contains purified, either through a good allotment, or through probity of life, or through a perfection arising from sacred operations, such an one will perceive things invisible to others, and will hear things inaudible to others." It seems probable, however, that what Pythagoras really meant was, that the ratios or intervals of the planets betokened relations of number, which is the mathematical constituent of music.

The reverence amounting almost to adoration which Pythagoras inspired is only accounted for on the presumption that he actually possessed certain preternatural qualities, or in default of that we must suppose that his admirers had the consummate faculty of conceiving a thing which is not known to exist. Empedokles, himself a sage, spoke of Pythagoras as a man "transcendent in knowledge, who possessed the most ample stores of intellectual wealth, and was in the most eminent degree the promoter of the works of the wise. For when he extended all the powers of his intellect, he easily beheld everything, as far as to ten or twenty ages of the human race." The theory seems to have been, that Pythagoras was conscious of his spiritual as well as his terrestrial being, and had the faculty of awakening this dormant consciousness in others. Iamblichos says, "If we may believe in so many ancient and credible historians as have written concerning him, the words of Pythagoras

contained something of a recalling and admonitory nature, which extended even so far as to irrational animals." Legends are told of Pythagoras gently stroking a most dangerous bear, and conjuring it to touch living beings no more; to an ox he is said to have given counsel in whisper, counsel which was followed; and an eagle he is said to have allured from the sky to his hand, afterwards letting it go. We are reminded in these legends of the traditions attaching to Orpheus.

Pythagoras was "the cause to his disciples of the most appropriate converse with divine beings, whether while awake or asleep; a thing which never takes place in a soul disturbed by anger, or pain, or pleasure, or 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 things is perceived."

The main original feature in Pythagoras as a teacher seems to be his high consciousness of harmony, whether in actual existence, or as a treasure to be earnestly sought for. This harmony he saw, in the interdependency of the parts of the universe, in the amity between divine beings and men, between one doctrine and another, between the soul and the body, the rational and irrational part; he desired to see the same harmony made more sure in the relations of man to man, of husband to wife, of brothers one to

the other, of the mortal body, with all its latent contrary powers, to its pacificator, the mind. Friendship, using the word in its widest sense, as implying relations even between things inanimate; this might have been his motto.

The rules of the community administered by Pythagoras must have been very rigid; or rather the atmosphere which he breathed was so rare and pure that a man failing to live up to the high ideal presented to him by the master would almost of necessity find himself outside the societary life. And, so far as may be judged by the traditions remaining, there was no arbitrary enforcement of membership, but the association was wholly voluntary.

Mathematics was made one of the early studies in the Pythagorean school, as being the first step towards wisdom. For a science which deals with that which lies in the middle region between things appreciable to the senses and spiritual and divine facts, enlarges the mind and renders it the more elastic for the reception of supersensual ideas. In other words, that which has to do with abstract and intangible properties, is a fit preparation for the study of what is spiritual. What the students learned, they were trained to learn thoroughly, and the strength and accuracy of the memory were maintained by constant exercise. The student before rising from his bed was led to review the actions and studies of the preceding day in the minutest detail. This was done methodically and in the right order; and one day's events resumed, the Pythagorean proceeded to recal to himself the transactions of the day before that.

The late Dr. Mozley asserted that the simple apprehension of a spiritual world is by itself no preservative whatever against moral

obliquities. This may be true, though the enlargement of the vista of life due to such an apprehension should not be without an effect at once steadying and elevating. Even Tyndall urges that "what is really wanted is the lifting power of an ideal element in human life." "What's the best thing in the world? Something

out of it, I think," says Elizabeth Barrett Browning. If in this best thing be found the ideal, it is of little moment on the score of marvel, but of the highest if it be fact. Pythagoras painted no vague or startling picture of life in Hades, but he staunchly asserted that to be injured oneself is better than to murder another, for in that unseen life is judgment, and the soul there finds its proper estimation and level. Retributive justice he very ingeniously associated with the symbol of the right-angled triangle. That figure may be composed with an infinite number of variations of its sides, but it will ever contain an equal demonstration of power. Whatever the relative proportions of the sides of the triangle, the square of the side subtending the right angle will invariably be equal to the combined squares of the two sides containing the right angle. Circumstances vary, the law abides.

A man raised, strengthened, and purified by earnestness and culture has a double duty,-to himself and to others. He is bound to exercise his faculties for his own sake lest they perish of inaction; he is bound by the law of his being to exercise them not only for himself but for others. It is an almost necessary consequence of the growth of a community to strength, that it should be called upon to do practical work. If it has dealt with those who are without its rules, in love, it will have won respect, and

will be besought to contribute of its experience.

In the order founded by Pythagoras, there were the listeners who passed on into classes for mathematics and physics. Among more advanced students we find the division into exoterics and esoterics. There were members given to contemplation, to science, to politics. And outside these divisions there were others founded on the rela tions of the disciples to the master. There were personal friends, direct disciples, who were called-probably not in his lifetime-Pythagorics; the disciples of these, Pythagoreans; while those who lived outside the community, but emulated its life, formed the class of Pythagorists.

Everything of the Pythagorean tradition betokens a volunteer hierarchical order, in which by the conquest of unruly ambitions and passions, each found his true place. Two considerations suggest themselves : that an organisation so formed must prove one of great power; that when it came to extend its influence, there would be lack of homogeneity, tending to disruption, between a group of persons trained to absolute self-control and a mass of citizens priding themselves on the most they can acquire of freedom.

The late Lord Lytton speaks thus of Pythagoras in reference to the external and political development of his Order. "He selected the three hundred, who at Croton formed his Order, from the noblest families, and they were professedly reared to know themselves, that so they might be fitted to command the world. It was not long before this society, of which Pythagoras was the head, appears to have supplanted the ancient Senate, and obtained the legislative administration. In this institution Pythagoras stands alone; no other