PREFACE. xxi 



paffion and perturbation. He had power alfo, It was fald, over 

 brutes, and made even the wildeft and fierceft of them obey him. 



There are many, I know, of the age in which we live, who will 

 confider this man, fo much admired by all antiquity, as no better 

 than an impoftor : But I cannot rejed what was believed of him by 

 all his followers, and altefted by fo many credible authors, who lived 

 near his time, unlefs I could be convinced of the impoiTibility that a 

 being could exift, fuch as Ariftotle mentions, that was fomething 

 betwixt God and man. But, fo far from being of that opinion, I 

 am convinced that there are many Intelligences betwixt us and the 

 Supreme Intelhgence, of power far fuperior to us: And indeed a 

 philofopher, who has obferved the wonderful variety of Nature in 

 other animals, and how much they rife one above another, cannot 

 doubt that there is the fame variety and fubordination one to another 

 in the intelleaual as in the animal Nature. Some of thefe fuperior 

 Intelligences were underftood by the Antients to be clothed with 

 aerial or etherial bodies, aep« e<r<Tc^f^Bvoi, as Hefiod expreffes it, 

 and were called Demons. But there is certainly nothing in Nature 

 to hinder a fuperior Intelligence from inhabiting fuch a body as 

 ours, and I believe Pythagoras to have been a being of that kind : 

 And I likewife believe that in more antient times there were many 

 fuch^ who were revered as a fuperior race of men, and known by 

 the name of Heroes and Demigods, 



That Pythagoras was no impoftor, or pretender to more wlfdom 

 than he really had, is, I think, evident from what he did. He 

 eftablifhed at Crotona a School of Philofophy, fuch as, I believe, 

 never was any where elfe on earth ; at leaf. I am fure there was 

 never any fuch in Europe : And in this refped it feems to have ex- 

 celled even the colleges of the Priefts in Egypt, that it joined prac- 

 tical 



