58 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



unsubstantial ; and when the feeling arising from the impression 

 depended on the momentary and accidental state of the body im- 

 pressed ? 



Pythagoras The followers of Pythagoras pursued a directly-opposite course in 

 lowers! fol ~ tneir investigations. Perceiving that, from certain definitions, if the 

 properties assumed were considered as the essential properties of 

 figures, all the other properties might be deduced by an easy method, 

 and a connected system might thus be formed of demonstrable truths, 

 they satisfied themselves that such assumed properties were really 

 original and primary ; and that in the course of nature, in like manner 

 as in the course of their studies, the other properties flowed from 

 them as their source. Numbers seemed with them to have been 

 taken for something elementary. These the earlier Pythagoreans 

 considered not only as the essences but as the causes and originative 

 producers of all things ; and though their theory admitted of divini- 

 ties, these seem only to have been higher natures, some harmonious 

 products, as it were, of numbers, in the same manner as the visible 

 world was a less harmonious product of the same causes. By what 

 ingenuity the early Pythagoreans could have derived all the qualities 

 of the visible world from combinations of mere numbers, Aristotle 

 confessed himself incompetent to conceive. It is scarcely, therefore, 

 to be hoped that this mystery of antiquity can be solved when the 

 materials for information are still more deficient. Other followers of 

 Pythagoras seemed to have reasoned in a manner less subtle, and to 

 have arrived at some conclusions of the highest moment. These per- 

 ceived or imagined in the external world, amidst its varying pheno- 

 mena, the existence of certain substances of a more permanent nature. 

 They perceived that whilst individual objects perish, the classes of 

 objects still remain ; that whilst some qualities are transformed by 

 attrition, or fusion, or other operations of nature or art, other proper- 

 ties appear to be inherent and unchangeable. They concluded, there- 

 fore, that there exist in nature two distinct classes, one of variable 

 qualities, and the other of eternal essences. But as their principal 

 attention was directed to mathematical studies, and as they found that 

 in the external world no materials could be found exactly correspond- 

 ing to their notions of quantity, whether continuous or discrete ; that 

 physical squares or circles always involved some disproportion ; and 

 that musical instruments, however formed, could never adequately 

 give, through the medium of sense, the relations of their musical 

 scales, though these last were formed of perfect consonances, they in- 

 ferred that essences exist in some manner independent of phenomena, 

 and that phenomena are but imperfect representatives of essences. 

 They judged that the relations of things are eternal, but the things 

 related fluctuating and accidental. They deemed that there is a 

 perfect intellectual world discoverable by intellect ; and also a visible 

 world, which is but a semblance and approximation to the other, the 

 proper object of mere sense. 



