of Heraclitus. The
mystery of existence, the unreality of what seems most real, the
intangibility and evanescence of all things earthly,--these thoughts
obscurely echoing to us across the ages from Heraclitus, have remained,
and always will remain, among the deepest and most insistent of the
world's thoughts, in its sincerest moments and in its greatest thinkers.

{22}

CHAPTER III

PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS

_The Pythagorean Brotherhood--Number the master--God the soul of the
world--Music and morals_

[41]

The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the
Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that
island, during or immediately before the famous tyranny [43] of
Polycrates. All manner of legends are told of the travels of
Pythagoras to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and even to India. Others
tell of a mysterious initiation at the sacred cave of Jupiter in Crete,
and of a similar ceremony at the Delphic oracle. What is certain is
that at some date towards the end of the sixth century B.C. he removed
to Southern Italy, which was then extensively colonised by Greeks, and
that there he became a great philosophic teacher, and ultimately even a
predominating political influence.

[46]

He instituted a school in the strictest sense, with its various grades
of learners, subject for years to a vow of silence, holding all things
in common, and admitted, according to their approved fitness, to {23}
[47] successive revelations of the true doctrine of the Master. Those
in the lower grades were called Listeners; those in the higher,
Mathematicians or Students; those in the most advanced stage,
Physicists or Philosophers. With the political relations of the school
we need not here concern ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek
cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who,
having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had
learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for
some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and
Pythagoreanism as a political power was violently rooted out.

Returning to the philosophy of Pythagoras, in its relation to the
general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that
it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of
Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others.
The teaching was largely ora