566 HISTORV OF PHILOSOPHY, 



gift of augury. Their notions of Providence may perhaps be weighed 

 in the balance against their belief in popular superstition. " We 

 are," said they, " the property of the gods who govern us, and watch 

 over and provide for our necessities." Truth and goodness were the 

 attributes of divinity recognised by them. The ideas of the Pytha- 

 goreans on ethics bore a far riper fruit. Judging by the rules to which 

 Pythagoras subjected his disciples, he considered moderation as the 

 essential character of virtue, self-government the means of obtaining 

 it, internal peace the consequence. The genius of Pythagoras was 

 principally directed to practical precepts, which he enforced by the 

 rigorous exercises he required from his disciples, namely, retirement, 

 silence, obedience, and a severe dietetical regimen. The following 

 beautiful thought has been attributed to Pythagoras, by Jamblicus, 

 in his Life of him, and may be considered as the soul of the regula- 

 tions of his order: "The love of truth, and zeal for the performance 

 of what is good, are the most precious gifts accorded by Heaven to 

 man." 



Their psychology is not destitute of sagacious ideas. They con- 

 sidered the human mind to possess two parts : the one instinctive, 

 the other reasonable: the one the instrument of physical wants and 

 blind passions, the other of the calm meditations of wisdom. To the 

 first of these faculties may be traced the resemblance attributed by 

 the Pythagoreans of man to the rest of the animal creation, as it con- 

 tained an exciting cause common to both. The first period of the 

 school of Italy terminates with Eudorus, at once an astronomer, a 

 geometer, a physician, and a lawyer. Of him we know no more. 

 In comparing the school of Ionia with that of Italy, we perceive at 

 once that they followed very different paths. The first applying to 

 nature and its sensible phenomena, drew their explanations from these 

 sources themselves; the latter, laying down certain abstract rules, ac- 

 commodated nature to them. Both endeavoured to discover general 

 laws, the one by analogy, the other from mathematical relations. The 

 one borrowed the aid of observation, the other of calculation. With 

 the one, facts and their contingent truths only were admitted ; with 

 the other, absolute and necessary truth prevailed. The one endea- 

 voured to restrain, the otherto extend, such speculations as were purely 

 intellectual. Both identified the first cause with the primitive ele- 

 ment ; but the first admitted no supernatural agents: the latter 

 allowed of subordinate deities. Both considered the universe as a 

 whole, allied in all its parts : but the school of Ionia established this 

 unity by the material links of phenomena : that of Italy, by the order 

 arid harmony of system. 



SCHOOLS OF ELEA. Heraclitus. ' ** 



In like manner as buildings were erected long before the principles 

 of mechanics or the laws of equilibrium were known, so also philoso- 

 phical theories were established long before men had learned to mea- 

 sure the extent and powers of the human understanding. As, then, 

 we study the style and principles of the ancient architects from the 

 monuments which remain of their production, so we should judge of the 

 logic of their philosophers by the systems they discovered or invented. 



