ages such as
Heraclitus. They were able to say proudly of themselves that much had
been revealed to them, for they did not attribute their knowledge to
their transitory personality, but to the eternal daimon within them.
Their pride had as a necessary adjunct the stamp of humility and
modesty, expressed in the words, "All knowledge of perishable things
is in perpetual flux like the things themselves." Heraclitus calls the
eternal universe a play, he could also call it the most serious of
realities. But the word "earnest" has lost its force through being
applied to earthly experiences. On the other hand, the realisation of
"the play of the eternal" leaves man that security in life of which he
is deprived by that earnest which has come out of transitory things.

A different conception of the universe from that of Heraclitus grew
up, on the basis of the Mysteries, in the community founded by
Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. in Southern Italy. The Pythagoreans
saw the basis of things in the numbers and geometrical figures of
which they investigated the laws by means of mathematics. Aristotle
says of them: "They first studied mathematics, and, quite engrossed in
them, they considered the elements of mathematics to be the elements
of all things. Now as numbers are naturally the first thing in
mathematics, and they thought they saw many resemblances in numbers to
things and to development, and certainly more in numbers than in fire,
earth, and water, in this way one quality of numbers came to mean for
them justice, another, the soul and spirit, another, time, and so on
with all the rest. Moreover they found in numbers the qualities and
connections of harmony; and thus everything else, in accordance with
its whole nature, seemed to be an image of numbers, and numbers seemed
to be the first thing in nature."

The mathematical and scientific study of natural phenomena must always
lead to a certain Pythagorean habit of thought. When a string of a
certain length is struck, a particular sound is produced. If the
string is shortened in certain numeric proportions, other sounds will
be produced. The pitch of the sounds may be expressed in figures.
Physics also expresses colour-relations in figures. When two bodies
combine into one substance, it always happens that a certain definite
quantity of the one body, expressible in numbers, combines with a
certain definite quantity of the other. The Pythagoreans' sense of
observation was d