Philosophy of Botany. 189 



a Milesian, born B.C. 556, conceived tlie air or ether endowed 

 with a divine principle and the celestial bodies of fiery nature. 

 Anaxagoras, of Clazoniene. taught philosophy in Athens B.C. 

 500, and among his pupils were Euripides, the tragedian ; the 

 orator and statesman. Pericles ; Socrates, and Themistocles. 

 He originated the idea of the dualism, of mind and matter. 

 For his assertion that the so-called divine miracles of the times 

 were nothing more than common natural effects he was ac- 

 cused of impiety toward the gods, thrown into prison, con- 

 demned to death, and barely escaped through the influence of 

 Pericles. He fled to Lampsacus, where he ended his days in 

 exile. 



The antagonism between learning and Polytheism had com- 

 menced, and became from day to day more apparent. The 

 natural result of such a state of things was to force the philos- 

 ophers to practice concealment and mystification, as is strik- 

 ingly shown in the history of the Pythagoreans. 



This school was started by Pythagoras in Croton, in Lower 

 Italia, a province called Grecia Magna. Pythagoras had lived 

 a long time in Egypt among the priests of Thebes, by whom 

 lie was intraduced into their religious secrets. All wisdom and 

 learning was held there by the sacerdotal class, and their ten- 

 ets were kept concealed from the common populace, which 

 was taught to receive with submission and obedience the doc- 

 trines and tenets of the order. The independent Hellenic char- 

 acter would, however, not bend to such rulings, and they could 

 only practice their tenets within their own fraternity. 



Pythagoras was born in Samos in the time of Tarquinius 

 Superbus. He was the first to use the term " philosophus." 

 Out of esteem for his sublime wisdom the people would call 

 him '■ Sophos " (the wise one). He declined this honor, say- 

 ing that he was only a philosophus, a friend of wisdom. The 

 most important dogma of his school is the assertion that the 

 divinity is the soul of the world, of which the human soul is 

 an emanation, and that it will revert again into the former 

 after its migrations through many bodies. He laid a firm 

 foundation for the science of mathematics among the Greeks. 



Besides the Pythagorean flourished also the Eleatic school 

 of philosophers, of which Xenophanes, of Kolophon, is the 



