83

PYTHAGORAS:

AND THE

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.

BY RICHARD STEEL.

If we are to judge of the thinkers of past ages by the influence they individually exercised over the men of their own time, we must accord to Pythagoras a place second to none amongst the philosophic thinkers of the ancient world. We know, however, much less of his personality and of his doctrines than we know of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Even the features of the two last have been preserved to us by ancient art, and their works have been handed down from generation to generation as amongst the choicest literary treasures of mankind. But this great trio enjoyed an advantage over Pythagoras so far as the possibilities of future fame were concerned. Not only did they flourish from one to two centuries later, but in their personal history they formed a close intellectual succession. Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, and Plato was the pupil of Socrates, and the mantle of the teacher in each of these cases fell upon the disciple as the chariot of death swept away with the beloved master, this circumstance in itself securing some record in the writings of the survivor of the fame and wisdom of the departed. Pythagoras, however, left no such immediate successor. Like Socrates, he in all probability wrote nothing. It is at any rate certain that, if he did write anything, it did not long survive him; and, unlike Socrates, his teaching was confined to a few, and was only known in its entirety to those whom he had chosen by a rigid and severe process of selection. Yet, in spite of these circum

stances, so disadvantageous for its extension, the cult of the Pythagoreans was not only strong and influential in the immediate time of its founder, but its influence lay so strongly upon the mind of humanity that, after becoming apparently extinguished amidst civil discord, and superseded by later schools, it again revived centuries afterwards in a high degree of vigour, and made its mark upon the earlier generations of the Christian era, and even, in association with Platonism, upon some currents of modern European thought.

In sketching, in the first instance, the personal history of this celebrated man, we are confronted, as always in the cases of those who lived so long ago, with a primary question with regard to the reliability of those authorities from whom our facts are to be taken. There are scattered notices with regard to Pythagoras and his opinions in several works written within some few generations of the time of that philosopher. Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle refer to him and his school, the latter with considerable frequency. Aristotle, indeed, thought his work of so much importance that he wrote a special treatise on the Pythagorean philosophy, which has however not come down to us. But though Pythagoras must have had in the interval several biographers, and though Ovid gives us a poetical sketch of his opinions, the only connected works of the biographical kind which have survived were written centuries after even the time of Aristotle himself. These are three in number. There is, in the first place, a life of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, being one of his Lives of the Philosophers, and written probably about the end of the second century of the Christian era. There is, secondly, a life of Pythagoras by Porphyry, who flourished during the third century. And, lastly, there is another life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus, who was a pupil and contemporary of Porphyry. These three biographies

were without doubt collated in a great measure from materials then existing, which have been subsequently lost, but there are, I think, distinct reasons for giving the preference to the account given by Diogenes Laertius, so far as it goes. They all relate much incredible matter, which must be at once set aside; but of the three writers, Diogenes Laertius was probably the earliest, and apparently the most free from bias. He frequently acquits himself of the high literary duty of giving references, some of which it is, of course, impossible now to verify, but which nevertheless serve to attest the bona fides of the writer. From the importance he assigns in his Lives to Epicurus, he is believed to have been an Epicurean, and the very fact of this being the only clue to his opinions serves to shew his general impartiality. He attempted the life of Pythagoras indeed just as he attempted the lives of eighty other philosophers, merely, so to speak, as an act of literary duty. Porphyry, on the other hand, was a vigorous controversialist. He assailed Christianity and attacked the book of Daniel, and it may easily be thought that his worship of Pythagoras was intensified by his pronounced opposition to other ways of thinking. Iamblichus, again, though he also evidently compiled his Life from earlier materials, was a follower of Porphyry; was, like him, an opponent of Christianity; like him, an ardent Neo-Platonist, and in his narrative treats of Pythagoras to some extent as a forerunner of his still greater idol, Plato. Moreover, Iamblichus regarded Pythagoras as divine, or in Neo-Platonic language, as a beneficent dæmon ; and as he also lays down the convenient canon that nothing should be accounted incredible which related to the gods or to what was divine, we may fairly, upon his own showing, have some doubts as to the severity of his criticism of those materials which he had at his disposal. We may thus assume, in conclusion, that while such notices as appear in

the earlier writers already referred to, are, so far as they go, the most reliable materials to be procured, Diogenes Laertius must be taken to come next in order of credibility.

Fortunately, however, for our present purpose, we are not obliged to press these principles of criticism to any severe extent. It is possible to summarize briefly the main facts of the life of Pythagoras without trespassing far upon controversial ground. He was born somewhere about 570 B.C., and authorities differ as to whether Sidon or Samos was the place of his nativity. Perhaps the statement of Iamblichus that his parents were resident in Samos, but that he was born at Sidon during one of his father's trading adventures, supplies a convenient compromise as to the matter of fact. His father, Mnesarchus, according to this version of the story, was a merchant, but the accounts of Diogenes Laertius and others represent him to have been an engraver of signets, a profession of some importance amongst the ancients, and one to their proficiency in which we moderns are under considerable obligations. There can be no doubt in any case that during his youth Pythagoras lived in Samos, from which island he travelled in early manhood, probably to Egypt, perhaps to Babylon, and possibly even to India. He is said during these travels to have conferred with the Egyptian priests, the Magi and the Gymnosophists, and to have learned generally all that there was to be known. Discounting these statements in a liberal spirit, we may at least admit the probable accuracy of the assertion, put in the mouth of Heraclitus by Diogenes Laertius, that Pythagoras was the most learned of all men in history, of his own day and generation that is to say.

On the return of Pythagoras to Samos, after many years' wandering, he established there a school, and subsequently, probably on account of the tyranny of the Samian ruler, Polycrates, he proceeded to Southern Italy- Magna Græcia,