44 Baron Cuvier's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. 



Italic School. — The second school, the Italic School, was 

 founded by Pythagoras. This philosopher was born at Samos, 

 about 584 years before Christ. He was contemporary Avith 

 Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus. It is even said 

 that he was, hke them, a disciple of Thales ; of this, however, 

 there is no positive proof. After having travelled into Egypt, 

 into Magna Graecia, and perhaps into India, he returned to his 

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

 crates. Discontented with the changes this chief had intro- 

 duced, he went into Italy, and settled at Crotona, a city built 

 about 120 years before by a colony of Achaians. 



He very soon founded secret societies there, to which he an- 

 nexed institutions, of the same plan with those of the Egyptian 

 sacerdotal tribe. He received none as disciples until they had 

 submitted to a long noviciate. 



He imposed on them fastings, and different modes of absti- 

 nence, and singular practices, with the design of which we are 

 utterly unacquainted. The societies which he founded were 

 soon dispersed, because they were charged by the people with 

 ambitious views ; they were not revived till long after his death. 



Pythagoras left no work of any kind ; and it is not even 

 known whether he ever wrote any thing. He had learnt in 

 Eo-ypt the first elements of geometry ; and tried, it is said, to 

 discover the principle of things in the powers of numbers. 

 Every thing relating to this part of his doctrine has been so 

 disfigured by those who revived his school, after the time of the 

 persecutions, that it is difficult to judge of his real opinions. 

 Perhaps he wished to inculcate, that it is possible to estimate by 

 numbers all powers, all dimensions, and of thus rendering them 

 comparable, and susceptible of being reduced to calculation. 

 In this case, his idea would be the same with that which serves, 

 in our day, as the basis of all physical mathematics. 



Pythagoras divided all beings into equal and unequal : the 

 last were composed of monades, or unites ; the other of diodes, 

 or dualites. He extended the language of arithmetic even to 

 morals, and said that justice was always divisible by two. It is 

 impossible not to consider this as an allegorical expression ; and, 

 with equal justice, it may be said, that, in many instances, ideas 



