214 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



thought, although its envelopment was partly rent 

 asunder and was becoming transparent. From this 

 hrief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for 

 our purpose, let us return to the Pythagorean school, 

 in which, although the faculty at work is essentially 

 objective, there is a closer consideration of the analo- 

 gies between thought and the world, and the ground 

 is more often retraced, so that theory assumes a more 

 intellectual form, 



The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the 



world as the union of the two opposite principles of 



the illimitable and the limited, of the equal and the 



unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive 



union, since they formulated the supreme principle 



as equal unequal. (Arist. Met. xii. 7.) They held 



the infinite to be the place of the one. There was an 



attraction between the two principles, which was 



termed the act of breathing ; hence the void entered 



into the world and separated things from each other. 



Thus their conception of the world was that of a 



concourse of opposite principles. They represented 



its limits as a unity and as the true beginning of 



multiplicity. They regarded the development of the 



world as a process of life regulated by the primitive 



principles contained in the world ; its breath or life 



depended on the breaking forth of the infinite void in 



Uranus, and the time which is termed the interval 



of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath 



into the world. All therefore emanates from one, 



