Natural-Historical Cdlections. l3? 



Lastly, Heraclitus, who may also be looked upon as belonging to the Ionian 

 school, placed his principle in fire ; but he perhaps regarded it rather as being 

 the source of animation and motion than as forming the matter of bodies itself. 

 Some connection may be perceived between this system and that of the physio- 

 logists, who have placed the principle of animal life in the heat produced by the 

 act of respiration. 



Italian School. The second or Italian school was founded by Pythagoras. 

 This philosopher was bom at Samos about the year 584 before Christ. He was 

 the contemporary of Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. It has even 

 been said that he was, like them, a disciple of Thales. But this is by no means 

 certain. After having travelled into Egypt, Magna Graecia, and perhaps India, 

 he returned to his native country, which he found governed by the tyrant Poly- 

 crates. Displeased with the changes which that ruler had introduced, he retired 

 to Italy, and settled at Crotona, a city built 120 years before by a colony of Ach- 

 aans. There he presently founded secret societies, to which he gave institu- 

 tions modelled upon those of the sacerdotal caste in Egypt. He did not receive 

 his disciples until after they had been subjected to a long noviciate ; and imposed 

 npon them fasts and abstinences of various kinds, the object of which is not well 

 known. The societies which he founded were soon dispersed, because they were 

 accused of ambitious views ; nor were they renewed until long after his death. 



Pythagoras has left no work, nor is It even known if he ever wrote any. He 

 had acquired the first elements of geometry in Egypt, and is said to have sought 

 the principle of things in the power of numbers. All that relates to this part of 

 his doctrine has been so disfigured by those who renewed his school after the pe- 

 riod of the persecutions, that it is difficult to judge of his real ideas. Perhaps he 

 meant to say that it is possible to estimate all the powers and magnitudes in num- 

 bers, and thus render them comparable and capable of being submitted to calcu- 

 lation. In this case, his idea was the same as that which, at the present day, 

 serves as a basis to all mathematical physics. 



He divided aU objects into such as are in pairs or single. The latter were 

 composed of monads or unities, the former of diads or dualities. He even car- 

 ried the language of arithmetic into his moral system, and said that justice was 

 always divisible by two. It is impossible not to consider this expression as alle- 

 gorical, and it may be equally supposed that, in many cases, ideas have been 

 attributed to this philosopher which he did not entertain, by taking literally what 

 he had said in a figurative sense. But even amid aU these singularities, we can- 

 hot fail to see that some progress was made. In fact, the Ionian school had seen 

 all in matter, whereas the Italian school sought something more, and thought it 

 w as found in the power of numbers. 



According to Pythagoras, the universe was a harmonic whole, and, for this 

 reason, the number of the planets was equal to that of the tones of the gamut. 

 In the centre of this harmony was the sun, the soul of the world and the prin- 

 ciple of motion. The souls of men and animals partook of the nature of this 

 celestial fire, as well as those of the gods, who were only animals of a higher 

 order. 



A school founded on the mathematical sciences could not fail to elicit some 

 truth. Accordingly, about the year 520 before Christ, we find an immediate 

 fcsciple of Pythagoras, Alcmeon of Croton, engaged in anatomical researches 

 6n animals. He is said to Tiave maintained that goats respire by their ears, 

 and this assertion has made him to be considered by some as an observer 

 unworthy of credit, while others have seen in it a proof of his being acquainted 

 with the Eustachian tube, by which the air in fact penetrates from the back part 

 of the mouth into the inner ear. We cannot, however, be too scrupulous as to 

 what we are to believe respecting those ancient philosophers who left no writings 

 behind them. All that tradition has preserved respecting them is generally so 

 incorrect, that we might with equal reason give them the honour of the most 

 beautiful discoveries, or attribute the most extravagant fancies to them. 



Alcmeon made observations on the formation of the embryo. He said that 

 VOL. II. 8 



