12 EVOLUTION. SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



determine what causes the eclipses and the 

 illumination of the moon : — "The moon has not 

 a light of her own but gets it from the sun. 

 The moon is eclipsed by the earth screening 

 the sun's light from it. The sun is eclipsed at 

 the new moon, when the moon screens it from 

 us." 



The Pythagoreans who must be distin- 

 guished from the medicine man Pythagoras, 

 from whom they only take their name indirect- 

 ly, and not as disciples, believed the reality of 

 the universe was to be found in numbers. 

 They were deceived into this absurdity by the 

 exactness of mathematical conclusions. This 

 was excusable among the Greeks to whom 

 arithmetical combinations were as wonderful 

 as electrical phenomena are to us, but its re- 

 vival in our day by astrologers and theo- 

 sophists has no such justification. 



Socrates, born about 470 B. C, at Athens, is 

 described as "pug-nosed, thick-lipped, big- 

 bellied and bulging-eyed" — the very opposite 

 of the Greek ideal of beauty. He believed that 

 knowledge itself would bring virtue, and 

 sought to discover the true ground of knowl- 

 edge. His search brought him into conflict 

 with the religious bigotry of his day and he 

 was finally sentenced to death and died from 

 drinking hemlock in 399 B. C. He wrote 



