ut it seems indisputable that there were widely spread
both in Greece and Italy societies called Pythagorean or Orphic which
inculcated a common rule of life and believed in metempsychosis. The
rule of life did not as a rule amount to asceticism in the Indian
sense, which was most uncongenial to Hellenic ideas, but it comprised
great self-restraint. The belief in metempsychosis finds remarkably
clear expression: we hear in the Orphic fragments of the circle of
birth and of escape from it, language strikingly parallel to many
Indian utterances and strikingly unlike the usual turns of Greek
speech and thought. Thus the soul is addressed as "Hail thou who hast
suffered the suffering" and is made to declare "I have flown out of
the sorrowful weary wheel."[1111] I see no reason for discrediting the
story that Pythagoras visited Egypt.[1112] He is said to have been a
Samian and during his life (_c._ 500 B.C.) Samos had a special
connection with Egypt, for Polycrates was the ally of Amasis and
assisted him with troops. The date, if somewhat early, is not far
removed from the time when metempsychosis became part of Egyptian
religion. The general opinion of antiquity connected the Orphic
doctrines with Thrace but so little is known of the Thracians and
their origin that this connection does not carry us much further. They
appear, however, to have had relations with Asia Minor and that region
must have been in touch with India.[1113] But Orphism was also
connected with Crete, and Cretan civilization had oriental
affinities.[1114]

The point of greatest interest naturally is to determine what were the
religious influences among which Christ grew up. Whatever they may
have been, his originality is not called in question. Mohammed was an
enquirer: in estimating his work we have often to ask what he had
heard about Christianity and Judaism and how far he had understood it
correctly. But neither the Buddha nor Christ were enquirers in this
sense: they accepted the best thought of their time and country: with
a genius which transcends comparison and eludes definition they gave
it an expression which has become immortal. Neither the substance nor
the form of their teaching can reasonably be regarded as identical,
for the Buddha did not treat of God or the divine government of the
world, whereas Christ's chief thesis is that God loves the world and
that therefore man should love God and his fellow men. But though
their basic principles