ting
the mathematical sciences, who played so conspicuous a part in the
development of ancient philosophy, and who exerted so powerful a
determining influence on the entire current of speculative thought, did
not obtain his ascendency over the intellectual manhood of Greece by the
utterance of such enigmas. And further, in interpreting the philosophic
opinions of the ancients, we must be guided by this fundamental
canon--"The human mind has, under the necessary operation of its own
laws, been compelled to entertain the same fundamental ideas, and the
human heart to cherish the same feelings in all ages." Now if a careful
philosophic criticism can not render the _reported_ opinions of an
ancient teacher into the universal language of the reason and heart of
humanity, we must conclude either that his opinions were misunderstood
and misrepresented by some of his successors, or else that he stands in
utter isolation, both from the present and the past. His doctrine has,
then, no relation to the successions of thought, and no place in the
history of philosophy. Nay, more, such a doctrine has in it no element
of vitality, no germ of eternal truth, and must speedily perish. Now it
is well known that the teaching of Pythagoras awakened the deepest
intellectual sympathy of his age; that his doctrine exerted a powerful
influence on the mind of Plato, and, through him, upon succeeding ages;
and that, in some of its aspects, it now survives, and is more
influential to-day than in any previous age; but this element of
immutable and eternal truth was certainly not contained in the inane and
empty formula, "that numbers are real existences, the causes of all
other existences!" If the fame of Pythagoras had rested on such "airy
nothings," it would have melted away before the time of Plato.

[Footnote 431: "History of Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 359.]

[Footnote 432: "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 38.]

We grant there is considerable force in the argument of Lewes. He urges,
with some pertinence, the unquestionable fact that Aristotle asserts,
again and again, that the Pythagoreans taught "that numbers are the
principles and substance of things as well as the causes of their
modifications;" and he argues that we are not justified in rejecting the
authority of Aristotle, unless better evidence can be produced.

So far, however, as the authority of Aristotle is concerned, even Lewes
himself charges him, in more than one i