Section IL, 1904 [ 289 ] Trans. R. S. C. 



VI. — Pythagoras and his Philosophy. 

 By Arthde Harvey. 



(Read June 24, 1904.) 



The object of this paper is to trace Pythagorean philosophy to its 

 source; a task which the ancients imperfectly performed and for which 

 new data have but recently been made available. The difficulty which 

 confronts the enquirer is that the master committed none of his views 

 to writing, and, though the same thing may be said of Socrates, the 

 latter did not, like the former, forbid his friends and followers to do 

 60. The place due to Socrates is therefore fixed, his tenets are fairly 

 understood, but Pythagoras has been a mystery, and it would be rash 

 t-, try to clear it up were it not for the flood of light brought to us 

 by the comparative methods now used. Kccently enlarged acquain- 

 tance with Indian, Assyrian and Egyptian languages and monuments 

 has immensely widened the field of comparative philology, comparative 

 religion, and comparative philosophy. The attempt to use the latter for 

 the solution of the P}i;hagorean enigma will lead us far in search of facts, 

 and the investigation must cover an extended period and space, but some 

 definite conclusion is necessary if we are to fix the place in the House 

 of Fame to which Pythagoras is entitled. On the one hand so well- 

 read a scholar as the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco declares that 

 " Pythagoras was the Newton, the G^alileo, perhaps the Edison and Mar- 

 "'coni of his epoch." On the other we may note that Lucretius dis- 

 misses him with but a line, and Prof. Watson, of this Society, in a 

 psper lately delivered to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, at 

 Toronto, referred to him with equal brevity. 



Eratosthenes, quoted by Diogenes Laertius (Lib. VIII, 47) says 

 that in the fort3'-eighth Olympiad Pythagoras, having entered in the 

 toys' class at boxing matches, was objected to as being too strong for 

 the other lads, so he was transferred to the grown men and beat them 

 all. It being contrary to rule to enter the ad.ult class voluntarily under 

 twenty, we may suppose him to have been then nineteen, which would 

 place the date of his birth at 608 B.C. He was the son of Mnesarchu?,, 

 an engraver of gems for rings, of the island of Samos. The time and 

 place are both of importance to our story. Egypt, which, under some 

 of its Pharaohs, had carried its victorious arms far into Svria, was 



