We shall leave these now and go on to Pythagoras, who was a contemporary of Anaximander; but the continuity of the development of the principle of physical philosophy necessitated our taking Anaximenes with him. We see that, as Aristotle said, they placed the first principle in a form of matter—in air and water first, and then, if we may so define Anaximander’s matter, in an essence finer than water and coarser than air. Heraclitus, of whom we have soon to speak, first called it fire. “But no one,” as Aristotle (Metaph. I. 8) remarks, “called earth the principle, because it appears to be the most complex element” (_διὰ τὴν μεγαλομέρειαν_); for it seems to be an aggregate of many units. Water, on the contrary, is the one, and it is transparent; it manifests in sensuous guise the form of unity with itself, and this is also so with air, fire, matter, &c. The principle has to be one, and hence must have inherent unity with itself; if it shows a manifold nature as does the earth, it is not one with itself, but manifold. This is what we have to say about the early Ionic Philosophy. The importance of these poor abstract thoughts lies (_a_) in the comprehension of a universal substance in everything, and (_b_) in the fact that it is formless, and not encumbered by sensuous ideas.
No one recognized better the deficiencies in this philosophy than did Aristotle in the work already quoted. Two points appear in his criticism of these three modes of determining the absolute: “Those who maintain the original principle to be matter fall short in many ways. In the first place, they merely give the corporeal element and not the incorporeal, for there also is such.” In treating of nature in order to show its essence, it is necessary to deal with it in its entirety, and everything found in it must be considered. That is certainly but an empirical instance. Aristotle maintains the incorporeal to be a form of things opposed to the material, and indicates that the absolute must not be determined in a one-sided manner; because the principle of these philosophers is material only, they do not manifest the incorporeal side, nor is the object shown to be Notion. Matter is indeed itself immaterial as this reflection into consciousness; but such philosophers do not know that what they express is an existence of consciousness. Thus the first great defect here rests in the fact that the universal is expressed in a particular form.
Secondly, Aristotle says (Metaph. I. 3): “From this it may be seen that first cause has only been by all these expressed in the form of matter. But because they proceeded thus, the thing itself opened out their way for them, and forced them into further investigation. For whether origin and decay are derived from one or more, the question alike arises, ‘How does it happen and what is the cause of it?’ For the fundamental substance (_τὸ ὑποκείμενον_) does not make itself to change, just as neither wood nor metal are themselves the cause of change; wood neither forms a bed nor does brass a statue, but something else is the cause of the change. To investigate this, however, is to investigate the other principle, which, as we would say, is the Principle of Motion.” This criticism holds good even now, where the Absolute is represented as the one fixed substance. Aristotle says that change is not conceivable out of matter as such, or out of water not itself having motion; he reproaches the older philosophers for the fact that they have not investigated the principle of motion for which men care most. Further, object is altogether absent; there is no determination of activity. Hence Aristotle says in the former passage: “In that they undertake to give the cause of origin and decay, they in fact remove the cause of movement. Because they make the principle to be a simple body (earth being excepted), they do not comprehend the mutual origination and decay whereby the one arises out of the other: I am here referring to water, air, fire, and earth. This origination is to be shown as separation or as union, and hence the contradiction comes about that one in time comes earlier than the other. That is, because this kind of origination is the method which they have adopted, the way taken is from the simple universal, through the particular, to the individual as what comes latest. Water, air, and fire are, however, universal. Fire seems to be most suitable for this element, seeing that it is the most subtle. Thus those who made it to be the principle, most adequately gave expression to this method (_λόγῳ_) of origination; and others thought very similarly. For else why should no one have made the earth an element, in conformity with the popular idea? Hesiod says that it was the original body—so ancient and so common was this idea. But what in Becoming comes later, is the first in nature.” However, these philosophers did not understand this so, because they were ruled by the process of Becoming only, without again sublating it, or knowing that first formal universal as such, and manifesting the third, the totality or unity of matter and form, as essence. Here, we see, the Absolute is not yet the self-determining, the Notion turned back into itself, but only a dead abstraction; the moderns were the first, says Aristotle, (Metaph. I. 6; III. 3) to understand the fundamental principle more in the form of genus.
We are able to follow the three moments in the Ionic philosophy: (_α_) The original essence is water; (_β_) Anaximander’s infinite is descriptive of movement, simple going out of and coming back into the simple, universal aspects of form—condensation and rarefaction; (_γ_) the air is compared to the soul. It is now requisite that what is viewed as reality should be brought into the Notion; in so doing we see that the moments of division, condensation, and rarefaction are not in any way antagonistic to the Notion. This transition to Pythagoras, or the manifestation of the real side as the ideal, is Thought breaking free from what is sensuous, and, therefore, it is a separation between the intelligible and the real.
B. PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS.
The later Neo-Pythagoreans have written many extensive biographies of Pythagoras, and are especially diffuse as regards the Pythagorean brotherhood. But it must be taken into consideration that these often distorted statements must not be regarded as historical. The life of Pythagoras thus first comes to us in history through the medium of the ideas belonging to the first centuries after Christ, and more or less in the style in which the life of Christ is written, on the ground of ordinary actuality, and not in a poetic atmosphere; it appears to be the intermingling of many marvellous and extravagant tales, and to take its origin in part from eastern ideas and in part from western. In acknowledging the remarkable nature of his life and genius and of the life which he inculcated on his followers, it was added that his dealings were not with right things, and that he was a magician and one who had intercourse with higher beings. All the ideas of magic, that medley of unnatural and natural, the mysteries which pervade a clouded, miserable imagination, and the wild ideas of distorted brains, have attached themselves to him.
However corrupt the history of his life, his philosophy is as much so. Everything engendered by Christian melancholy and love of allegory has been identified with it. The treatment of Plato in Christian times has quite a different character. Numbers have been much used as the expression of ideas, and this on the one hand has a semblance of profundity. For the fact that another significance than that immediately presented is implied in them, is evident at once; but how much there is within them is neither known by him who speaks nor by him, who seeks to understand; it is like the witches’ rhyme (one time one) in Goethe’s “Faust.” The less clear the thoughts, the deeper they appear; what is most essential, but most difficult, the expression of oneself in definite conceptions, is omitted. Thus Pythagoras’ philosophy, since much has been added to it by those who wrote of it, may similarly appear as the mysterious product of minds as shallow and empty as they are dark. Fortunately, however, we have a special knowledge of the theoretic, speculative side of it, and that, indeed, from Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, who have taken considerable trouble with it. Although later Pythagoreans disparage Aristotle on account of his exposition, he has a place above any such disparagement, and therefore to them no attention must be given.
In later times a quantity of writings were disseminated and foisted upon Pythagoras. Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 6, 7) mentions many which were by him, and others which were set down to him in order to obtain authority for them. But in the first place we have no writings by Pythagoras, and secondly it is doubtful whether any ever did exist. We have quotations from these in unsatisfactory fragments, not from Pythagoras, but from Pythagoreans. It cannot be decisively determined which developments and interpretations belonged to the ancients and which to the moderns; yet with Pythagoras and the ancient Pythagoreans the determinations were not worked out in so concrete a way as later.
As to the life of Pythagoras, we hear from Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 1-3, 45) that he flourished about the 60th Olympiad (540 B.C.). His birth is usually placed in the 49th or 50th Olympiad (584 B.C.); by Larcher in Tennemann (Vol. I., pp. 413, 414), much earlier—in the 43rd Olympiad (43, 1, i.e. 608 B.C.). He was thus contemporaneous with Thales and Anaximander. If Thales’ birth were in the 38th Olympiad and that of Pythagoras in the 43rd, Pythagoras was only twenty-one years younger than he; he either only differed by a couple of years from Anaximander (Ol. 42, 3) in age, or the latter was twenty-six years older. Anaximenes was from twenty to twenty-five years younger than Pythagoras. His birthplace was the Island of Samos, and hence he belonged to the Greeks of Asia Minor, which place we have hitherto found to be the seat of philosophy. Pythagoras is said by Herodotus (IV., 93 to 96) to have been the son of Mnesarchus, with whom Zalmoxis served as slave in Samos; Zalmoxis obtained freedom and riches, became ruler of the Getæ, and asserted that he and his people would not die. He built a subterranean habitation and there withdrew himself from his subjects; after four years he re-appeared;[31] hence the Getans believed in immortality. Herodotus thinks, however, that Zalmoxis was undoubtedly much older than Pythagoras.
His youth was spent at the court of Polycrates, under whose rule Samos was brought, not only to wealth, but also to the possession of culture and art. In this prosperous period, according to Herodotus (III., 39), it possessed a fleet of a hundred ships. His father was an artist or engraver, but reports vary as to this, as also as to his country, some saying that his family was of Tyrrhenian origin and did not go to Samos till after Pythagoras’ birth. That may be as it will, for his youth was spent in Samos and he must hence have been naturalized there, and to it he belongs. He soon journeyed to the main land of Asia Minor and is said there to have become acquainted with Thales. From thence he travelled to Phœnicia and Egypt, as Iamblichus (III., 13, 14) says in his biography of Pythagoras. With both countries Asia Minor had many links, commercial and political, and it is related that he was recommended by Polycrates to King Amasis, who, according to Herodotus (II. 154), attracted many Greeks to the country, and had Greek troops and colonies. The narratives of further journeys into the interior of Asia, to the Persian magicians and Indians, seem to be altogether fabulous, although travelling, then as now, was considered to be a means of culture. As Pythagoras travelled with a scientific purpose, it is said that he had himself initiated into nearly all the mysteries of Greeks and of Barbarians, and thus he obtained admission into the order or caste of the Egyptian priesthood.
These mysteries that we meet with amongst the Greeks, and which are held to be the sources of much wisdom, appear in their religion to have stood in the relationship of doctrine to worship. This last existed in offerings and solemn festivals only, but to ordinary conceptions, to a consciousness of these conceptions, there is no transition visible unless they were preserved in poems as traditions. The doctrines themselves, or the act of bringing the actual home to the conception, seems to have been confined to the mysteries; we find it to be the case, however, that it is not only the ideas as in our teaching, but also the body that is laid claim to—that there was brought home to man by sending him to wander amongst his fellow-men, both the abandonment of his sensuous consciousness and the purification and sanctification of the body. Of philosophic matter, however, there is as little openly declared as possible, and just as we know the system of freemasonry, there is no secret in those mysteries.
His alliance with the Egyptian priesthood had a most important influence upon Pythagoras, not through the derivation of profound speculative wisdom therefrom, but by the idea obtained through it of the realization of the moral consciousness of man; the individual, he learned, must attend to himself, if inwardly and to the outer world he is to be meritorious and to bring himself, morally formed and fashioned, into actuality. This is a conception which he subsequently carried out, and it is as interesting a matter as his speculative philosophy. Just as the priests constituted a particular rank and were educated for it, they also had a special rule, which was binding throughout the whole moral life. From Egypt Pythagoras thus without doubt brought the idea of his Order, which was a regular community brought together for purposes of scientific and moral culture, which endured during the whole of life. Egypt at that time was regarded as a highly cultured country, and it was so when compared with Greece; this is shown even in the differences of caste which assumes a division amongst the great branches of life and work, such as the industrial, scientific and religious. But beyond this, we need not seek great scientific knowledge amongst the Egyptians, nor think that Pythagoras got his science there. Aristotle (Metaph. I.) only says that “in Egypt mathematical sciences first commenced, for there the nation of priests had leisure.”[32] Pythagoras stayed a long time in Egypt, and returned from thence to Samos; but he found the internal affairs of his own country in confusion, and left it soon after. According to Herodotus’ account (III. 45-47), Polycrates had—not as tyrant—banished many citizens from Samos, who sought and found support amongst the Lacedæmonians, and a civil war had broken out. The Spartans had, at an earlier period, given assistance to the others, for, as Thucydides says (I. 18), to them thanks were generally ascribed for having abolished the rule of the few, and caused a reversion to the system of giving public power to the people; later on they did the opposite, abolishing democracy and introducing aristocracy. Pythagoras’ family was necessarily involved in these unpleasant relations, and a condition of internal strife was not congenial to Pythagoras, seeing that he no longer took an interest in political life, and that he saw in it an unsuitable soil for carrying out his plans. He traversed Greece, and betook himself from thence to Italy, in the lower parts of which Greek colonies from various states and for various motives had settled, and there flourished as important trading towns, rich in people and possessions.
In Crotona he settled down, and lived in independence, neither as a statesman, warrior, nor political law-giver to the people, so far as external life was concerned, but as a public teacher, with the provision that his teaching should not be taken up with mere conviction, but should also regulate the whole moral life of the individual. Diogenes Laertius says that he first gave himself the name _φιλόσοφος_, instead of _σοφός_; and men called this modesty, as if he thereby expressed, not the possession of wisdom, but only the struggle towards it, as towards an end which cannot be attained.[33] But _σοφός_ at the same time means a wise man, who is also practical, and that not in his own interest only, for that requires no wisdom, seeing that every sincere and moral man does what is best from his own point of view. Thus _φιλόσοφος_ signifies more particularly the opposite to participation in practical matters, that is in public affairs. Philosophy is thus not the love of wisdom, as of something which one sets oneself to acquire; it is no unfulfilled desire. _Φιλόσοφος_ means a man whose relation to wisdom is that of making it his object; this relationship is contemplation, and not mere Being; but it must be consciously that men apply themselves to this. The man who likes wine (_φίλοινος_) is certainly to be distinguished from the man who is full of wine, or a drunkard. Then does _φίλοινος_ signify only a futile aspiration for wine?
What Pythagoras contrived and effected in Italy is told us by later eulogists, rather than by historians. In the history of Pythagoras by Malchus (this was the Syrian name of Porphyry) many strange things are related, and with the Neo-Platonists the contrast between their deep insight and their belief in the miraculous is surprising. For instance, seeing that the later biographers of Pythagoras had already related a quantity of marvels, they now proceeded to add yet more to these with reference to his appearance in Italy. It appears that they were exerting themselves to place him, as they afterwards did with Apollonius of Tyana, in opposition to Christ. For the wonders which they tell of him seem partly to be an amplification of those in the New Testament, and in part they are altogether absurd. For instance, they make Pythagoras begin his career in Italy with a miracle. When he landed in the Bay of Tarentum, at Crotona, he encountered fishermen on the way to the town who had caught nothing. He called upon them to draw their nets once more, and foretold the number of fishes that would be found in them. The fishermen, marvelling at this prophecy, promised him that if it came true they would do whatever he desired. It came to pass as he said, and Pythagoras then desired them to throw the fishes alive back into the sea, for the Pythagoreans ate no flesh. And it is further related as a miracle which then took place, that none of the fishes whilst they were out of the water died during the counting. This is the kind of miracle that is recorded, and the stories with which his biographers fill his life are of the same silly nature. They then make him effect such a general impression upon the mind of Italy, that all the towns reformed upon their luxurious and depraved customs, and the tyrants partly gave up their powers voluntarily, and partly they were driven out. They thereby, however, commit such historical errors as to make Charondas and Zaleucus, who lived long before Pythagoras, his disciples; and similarly to ascribe the expulsion and death of the tyrant Phalaris to him, and to his action.[34] Apart from these fables, there remains as an historic fact, the great work which he accomplished, and this he did chiefly by establishing a school, and by the great influence of his order upon the principal part of the Greco-Italian states, or rather by means of the rule which was exercised in these states through this order, which lasted for a very long period of time. It is related of him that he was a very handsome man, and of a majestic appearance, which captivated as much as it commanded respect. With this natural dignity, nobility of manners, and the calm propriety of his demeanour, he united external peculiarities, through which he seemed a remarkable and mysterious being. He wore a white linen garment, and refrained from partaking of certain foods.[35] Particular personality, as also the externalities of dress and the like, are no longer of importance; men let themselves be guided by general custom and fashion, since it is a matter outside of and indifferent to them not to have their own will here; for we hand over the contingent to the contingent, and only follow the external rationality that consists in identity and universality. To this outward personality there was added great eloquence and profound perception; not only did he undertake to impart this to his individual friends, but he proceeded to bring a general influence to bear on public culture, both in regard to understanding and to the whole manner of life and morals. He not merely instructed his friends, but associated them in a particular life in order to constitute them into persons and make them skilful in business and eminent in morals. The Institute of Pythagoras grew into a league, which included all men and all life in its embrace; for it was an elaborately fashioned piece of work, and excellently plastic in design.
Of the regulations of Pythagoras’ league, we have descriptions from his successors, more especially from the Neo-Platonists, who are particularly diffuse as regards its laws. The league had, on the whole, the character of a voluntary priesthood, or a monastic order of modern times. Whoever wished to be received was proved in respect of his education and obedience, and information was collected about his conduct, inclinations, and occupations. The members were subject to a special training, in which a difference was made amongst those received, in that some were exoteric and some esoteric. These last were initiated into the highest branches of science, and since political operations were not excluded from the order, they were also engaged in active politics; the former had to go through a novitiate of five years. Each member must have surrendered his means to the order, but he received them again on retiring, and in the probationary period silence was enjoined (_ἐχεμυθία_).[36] This obligation to cease from idle talk may be called an essential condition for all culture and learning; with it men must begin if they wish to comprehend the thoughts of others and relinquish their own ideas. We are in the habit of saying that the understanding is cultivated through questioning, objecting and replying, &c., but, in fact, it is not thus formed, but made from without. What is inward in man is by culture got at and developed; hence though he remains silent, he is none the poorer in thought or denser of mind. He rather acquires thereby the power of apprehension, and comes to know that his ideas and objections are valueless; and as he learns that such ideas are valueless, he ceases to have them. Now the fact that in Pythagoras there is a separation between those in the course of preparation and those initiated, as also that silence is particularly enjoined, seems most certainly to indicate that in his brotherhood both were formal elements and not merely as present in the nature of things, as might occur spontaneously in the individual without any special law or the application of any particular consideration. But here it is important to remark that Pythagoras may be regarded as the first instructor in Greece who introduced the teachings of science; neither Thales, who was earlier than he, nor his contemporary Anaximander taught scientifically, but only imparted their ideas to their friends. There were, generally speaking, no sciences at that time; there was neither a science of philosophy, mathematics, jurisprudence or anything else, but merely isolated propositions and facts respecting these subjects. What was taught was the use of arms, theorems, music, the singing of Homer’s or Hesiod’s songs, tripod chants, &c., or other arts. This teaching is accomplished in quite another way. Now if we said that Pythagoras had introduced the teaching of science amongst a people who, though like the Greeks, untaught therein, were not stupid but most lively, cultured and loquacious, the external conditions of such teaching might in so far be given as follows:—(_α_) He would distinguish amongst those who as yet had no idea of the process of learning a science, so that those who first began should be excluded from that which was to be imparted to those further on; and (_β_) he would make them leave the unscientific mode of speaking of such matters, or their idle prattle, alone, and for the first time study science. But the fact that this action both appeared to be formal and likewise required to be made such, was, on account of its unwonted character, a necessary one, just because the followers of Pythagoras were not only numerous, necessitating a definite form and order, but also, generally speaking, they lived continually together. Thus a particular form was natural to Pythagoras, because it was the very first time that a teacher in Greece arrived at a totality, or a new principle, through the cultivation of the intelligence, mind and will. This common life had not only the educational side and that founded on the exercise of physical ingenuity or skill, but included also that of the moral culture of practical men.
But even now everything relating to morality appears and is or becomes altogether formal, or rather this is so in as far as it is consciously thought of as in this relation, for to be formal is to be universal, that which is opposed to the individual. It appears so particularly to him who compares the universal and the individual and consciously reflects over both, but this difference disappears for those living therein, to whom it is ordinary habit.
Finally, we have sufficient and full accounts of the outward forms observed by the Pythagoreans in their common life and also of their discipline. For much of this, however, we are indebted to the impressions of later writers. In the league, a life regulated in all respects was advocated. First of all, it is told us, that the members made themselves known by a similar dress—the white linen of Pythagoras. They had a very strict order for each day, of which each hour had its work. The morning, directly after rising, was set aside for recalling to memory the history of the previous day, because what is to be done in the day depends chiefly on the previous day; similarly the most constant self-examination was made the duty of the evening in order to find whether the deeds done in the day were right or wrong. True culture is not the vanity of directing so much attention to oneself and occupying oneself with oneself as an individual, but the self-oblivion that absorbs oneself in the matter in hand and in the universal; it is this consideration of the thing in hand that is alone essential, while that dangerous, useless, anxious state does away with freedom. They had also to learn by heart from Homer and from Hesiod; and all through the day they occupied themselves much with music—one of the principal parts of Greek education and culture.[37] Gymnastic exercises in wrestling, racing, throwing, and so on, were with them also enforced by rule. They dined together, and here, too, they had peculiar customs, but of these the accounts are different. Honey and bread were made their principal food, and water the principal, and indeed only, drink; they must thus have entirely refrained from eating meat as being associated with metempsychosis. A distinction was also made regarding vegetables—beans, for example, being forbidden. On account of this respect for beans, they were much derided, yet in the subsequent destruction of the political league, several Pythagoreans, being pursued, preferred to die than to damage a field of beans.[38] The order, the moral discipline which characterized them, the common intercourse of men, did not, however, endure long; for even in Pythagoras’ life-time the affairs of his league must have become involved, since he found enemies who forcibly overthrew him. He drew down upon him, it is said, the envy of others, and was accused of thinking differently from what he seemed to indicate, and thus of having an _arrière pensée_. The real fact of the case was that the individual belonged, not entirely to his town, but also to another. In this catastrophe, Pythagoras himself, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 414), met his death in the 69th Olympiad (504, B.C.) in a rising of the people against these aristocrats; but it is uncertain whether it happened in Crotona or in Metapontum, or in a war between the Syracusans and the Agrigentines. There is also much difference of opinion about the age of Pythagoras, for it is given sometimes as 80, and sometimes as 104.[39] For the rest, the unity of the Pythagorean school, the friendship of the members, and the connecting bond of culture have even in later times remained, but not in the formal character of a league, because what is external must pass away. The history of Magna Græcia is in general little known, but even in Plato’s[40] time we find Pythagoreans appearing at the head of states or as a political power.
The Pythagorean brotherhood had no relation with Greek public and religious life, and therefore could not endure for long: in Egypt and in Asia exclusiveness and priestly influence have their home, but Greece, in its freedom, could not let the Eastern separation of caste exist. Freedom here is the principle of civic life, but still it is not yet determined as principle in the relations of public and private law. With us the individual is free since all are alike before the law; diversity in customs, in political relations and opinions may thus exist, and must indeed so do in organic states. In democratic Greece, on the contrary, manners, the external mode of life, necessarily preserved a certain similarity, and the stamp of similarity remained impressed on these wider spheres; for the exceptional condition of the Pythagoreans, who could not take their part as free citizens, but were dependent on the plans and ends of a combination and led an exclusive religious life, there was no place in Greece. The preservation of the mysteries certainly belonged to the Eumolpidæ, and other special forms of worship to other particular families, but they were not regarded in a political sense as of fixed and definite castes, but as priests usually are, politicians, citizens, men like their fellows; nor, as with the Christians, was the separation of religious persons driven to the extreme of monastic rule. In ordinary civic life in Greece, no one could prosper or maintain his position who held peculiar principles, or even secrets, and differed in outward modes of life and clothing; for what evidently united and distinguished them was their community of principles and life—whether anything was good for the commonwealth or not, was by them publicly and openly discussed. The Greeks are above having particular clothing, maintaining special customs of washing, rising, practising music, and distinguishing between pure and impure foods. This, they say, is partly the affair of the particular individual and of his personal freedom, and has no common end in view, and partly it is a general custom and usage for everybody alike.