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some that are set apart, prefers the graces of sedateness to the revelry of enthusiasm. She rejects, as inharmonious and barbarous, the mimicry of her voice and manner by obstreperous sophists and argute grammarians, and she scatters to the winds the loose fragments of the schools. Socrates and his disciples run about the streets, pick up every young person they meet with, carry him away with them, and prove to him that everything he ever heard is false, and everything he ever said is foolish. He must love his father and mother in their way, or not at all. The only questions they ask him are those which they know he can not answer, and the only doctrines they inculcate are those which it is impossible he should understand. He has now fairly reached sublimity, and looks of wonder are interchanged at his progress. Is it sublime to strain our vision into a fog? and must we fancy we see far because we are looking where nobody can see farther?

CLXXVII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

The Massilian is intelligent and communicative. Some matters which he related at our conference you will perhaps remember in Herodotus: others are his own story; so let him tell the whole in his own manner.

"The unbroken force of Persia was brought under the walls of Phocæa. Harpagos, equally wise and generous, offered to our citizens the most favourable terms of surrender. They requested one day for deliberation. Aware of their intentions, he dissembled his knowledge, and allowed them to freight their ships, embark, and sail away. His clemency was however no security to his garrison. Within a few days the expatriated citizens landed again, slew every Persian within the walls, then, casting a mass of iron into the sea, swore they would never return a second time until it rose and floated on the surface. Some historians would persuade us that, after this cruel vengeance, this voluntary and unanimous oath, the greater part returned. Such a tale is idle and absurd. The Persians would too surely have inflicted due vengeance on their perfidy. Some however did indeed separate from the main body of the emigration, and came to reside here in Lampsacos, which their ancestors had founded, and where they continued on the most hospitable terms by frequent intermarriages. The bulk of the expedition reached Alalia, a colony of theirs, led recently into Corsica. Here they continued to reside but a little time unmolested by the jealousy of the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians. Undaunted by the coalition against them, and by the loss of many ships in a battle with the united fleet of the confederates, they sailed to the neighbourhood of the more ancient Grecian cities, and founded Elea, near Poseidonia. And now probably they first became acquainted with the disciples of Pythagoras. He himself, it is said, retired to Metaponton, and died there. When he went from Samos to Croton he was in the

vigour of life; and not many years elapsed ere he beheld the overthrow of his institutions. He is reported by some to have attained an extreme old age, which his tranquillity and temperance render probable. Even without this supposition, he may perhaps have visited the coast of Gaul, before or after the arrival of the Phocæans. Collecting, we may imagine, additional forces from the many Ionians whom the generals of Cyrus had expelled, they began to build the city of Massilia, not long after the settlement at Elea, which the vicinity of powerful states, and its incapacity and insecurity for the mooring of a navy, rendered ineligible as the seat of government, or as a constant station."

Thus much I had collected from Proxenos, when he began to give me information on anchorages and harbours, imports (and exports: I could not in common civility interrupt him, or ask any thing better than what it pleased him to bestow on me. As our acquaintance strengthens, I will draw more unreservedly from his stores.

CLXXVIII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Proxenos runs into some errors both in regard to facts and motives. It is false that Pythagoras, on returning from his voyage in Egypt, was indignant at finding a tyrant in his native city. Polycrates was in possession of the supreme power when the philosopher left the island, and used it with clemency and discretion. The traveller might have gone and might have returned with discontent, but indignation is averse to favours, and these he was by no means reluctant to accept. Finding he could not be the principal man among his fellow-citizens, he resolved to attain that rank where the supremacy was yet unoccupied. He had seen enough of the Egyptian and heard enough of the Indian priesthood, to convince him that, by a system somewhat similar to theirs, absolute power was more attainable and more safe. He took lessons and precautions; and wherever there was a celebrated and ancient temple, he visited its priests, and explored the origin and conduct of their institutions and authority. In recompense for these, he is reported to have raised his tunic to the holy ones at Olympia, and to have displayed a golden thigh. Nothing so royal, so godlike, had been seen since the reign of Pelops. A golden thigh is worth an ivory shoulder. Such a miracle, we may be sure, was not altogether lost upon the prophetess at Delphi, the fair Themistocleia, who promulgated to him her secrets in return.

His doctrines were kept within his own circle, under the safeguard of an oath. This in all countries is and ought to be forbidden, as being the prerogative of the magistracy. Love of supremacy was the motive in all his injunctions and in all his actions. He avoided the trouble of office and the danger of responsibility: he excluded the commons, and called to him the nobles, who alone were deemed worthy of serving him. Among

on the advancing clouds of the future here insurrections and wrecks and conflagrations; here the ascending, there the drooping diadem; the mighty host, the mightier man before it; and, in the serener line on the horizon, the emersion of cities and citadels over far-off seas. There are those who know in what quarter to look for them: but it is rarely to their hands the power of promoting the good, or averting the evil, is entrusted. Yet, O Anaxagoras! all is not hideous in the past, all is not gloomy in the future. There are communities where the best and wisest are not utterly cast aside, and where the robe of Philosophy is no impediment to the steps of men. Idly do our sages cry out against the poets for mistuning the heart and misgoverning the intellect. Meanwhile they themselves are occupied in selfish vanities on the side of the affections; and, on the side of the understanding, in fruitless, frivolous, indefinite, interminable disquisitions. If our thoughts are to be reduced to powder. I would rather it were for an ingredient in a love-potion, to soften with sympathies the human heart, than a charm for raising up spectres to contract and to coerce it. If dust is to be thrown into our eyes, let it be dust from under a bright enlivening sun, and not the effect of frost and wind.

these he established an equality, which, together | presents they have received from her at the feet with the regularity and frugality of their living, of History. Thus did Herodotus, thus did must have tended to conciliate and gratify in some Hecatæus, and thus, let me hope, will Anaxagomeasure the poorer citizens. Certain kinds of ras. The deeds of past ages are signally reflected animal food were forbidden, as in India and other countries less remote, but, contrary to what we have often heard asserted, no species of pulse or vegetable. 'Abstain from the bean' signified ‘abstain from elections to political employments.' The teacher was in the place of parent to his disciples, who appear to have renounced all the natural affections that had sprung up before they entered the society. His regimen was mild and generous : its principal merit was, however, the repression of loquacity; common in the ardour of youth after its chase in the fields of knowledge; commoner, and more unbecoming, in the morose repose of an arrogant philosophy. The history of Pythagoras, forasmuch as he interests us in being the leader of a sect and of a party, is neither long nor obscure. The commons of Croton soon began to perceive that, under his management, the sons of the aristocracy would be no better inclined than their fathers had been to concede them an equal share in the government and the rulers themselves, day after day, lost somewhat of authority in their families. During the whole time that he had resided in Italy, the people of nearly all the Greek cities heaved indignantly under oppressive oligarchies. Sybaris, whose health they were absorbing in more than Circæan luxuries, rose first upon her feet, and expelled the council of five hundred. They retired for refuge to the lords of Croton; and, when the Sybarites called for justice on them, the demand was voted an affront. And now indeed the veil of sanctity and seclusion was violently rent by the disciples of the Samian. He incited them to maintain peace and good government; pointed out to them the phantom of Freedom, how it blasted every region it past over; and adjured them to the defence of their rulers by the purity of their religion. They marched, fought a battle, won it, and Sybaris was swept from the earth.

Discord, I suspect, O Aspasia ! is the readiest of all the Deities to appear at our invocation. The oligarchs of Croton, long accustomed to uncontrolled power and irresponsible injustice, refused to the army, now comprehending all the active citizens, even the smallest portion of the spoils. Again did the Crotoniats cry to arms; and again, and in a better cause, were conquerors. Pythagoras* and his disciples fled before them, and the hall in which they assembled was reduced to ashes.

It is only a free city that is strong; for it is only in a free city that the mass of the people can be armed.

CLXXIX. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

Men of powerful minds, although they never give up Philosophy, yet cease by degrees to make their professions in form, and lay ultimately the

*Pythagoras was a Præ-jesuit.

CLXXX. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Philosophy is but dry bread: men will not live upon it, however wholesome: they require the succulent food and exciting cup of Religion. We differ in bodily strength, in compactness of bone, and elasticity of sinew; but we all are subject to the same softness, and nearly to the same distemperature, in the nobler animators of the frame, the brain and blood. Thus it is in creeds: the sage and simple, the ardent enthusiast and the patient investigator, fall into and embrace with equal pertinacity the most absurd and revolting tenets. There are as many wise men who have venerated the ibis and cat, as there are who have bent their heads before Zeus and Pallas. No extravagance in devotion but is defended by some other towering above it; no falsehood but whose features are composed to the semblance of truth. By some people those things are adored that eat them; by others, those that they eat. Men must rest here: superstition, satiated and gorged, can go no farther.

The progression of souls is not unreasonable, the transmigration is. That we shall pass hereafter into many states of successive existence is credible enough; but not upon earth, not with earthly passions. Yet Pythagoras was so resolute series of lives here among men, by the peculiar and so unguarded, that he asserted to himself a and especial favour of the Gods, with a perfect consciousness of every change he had undergone. Others became dogs, wolves, bears, or peradven

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ture men again; but knowing as little of what had happened. Nevertheless, he pretended that these transmigrations were punishments and rewards. Which is punished? the dead creature or the living? the criminal man or the guiltless animal? Some believe they can throw their sins into a fox: others (in Africa for instance) into a priest. Now the priest may have received what he esteems an equivalent: the fox is at once a creditor and a debtor, with little hope, on either side, of indemnity or balance. It is only when you or Pericles were my audience, that I ever was inclined to press hard against the inconsistencies of philosophers. But we must trace things to their origin where we can. The greater part of those now prevalent are ascribable to the school of Samos. Numerals were considered by the teacher as materials, and not only as the components, but as the elements, of the world. He misunderstood his own theory: the reason is, he made it his own by theft. The young persons who are hearers of the warier Socrates, catch at it in the playground, and the ill-compacted cake crumbles under their hands.

Unfavourable as my evidence must appear, and is, I am fortunate in being able to lay before you another and comelier representation of a philosopher so enriched by genius. I have always, in all companies, and upon all occasions, been sparing of my questions, and have exerted the uttermost ingenuity I am master of, in drawing the truth on, without such an instrument of torture. Probably I have lost by age a part of my dexterity, or presence of mind, or determination; for Proxenos, at the close of our conference, said aloud and sharply,

"You shall never make that out. I think him a very honest man; and I think nobody an honest man who thinks otherwise."

"Fair Proxenos!" I replied, "you are now greatly more than a philosopher. Some favourite God alone could have inspired all this enthusiasm. In the vigorous expression of that terse apothegm is there not somewhat more of the poet than of the Pythagorean?"

"I believe there may be" replied he, "I was always much given to poetry."

prove the identity of Pythagoras and Samotes. Strange, that the idea should have occurred to no one else in the course of many generations. Was it not sufficiently clear for the follower of truth? or was it not sufficiently dark and intricate for the lover of mystery and paradox? I imagine it stood between both, at an equal distance from the road of each, and thus it was past unnoticed.

There is nobody then who can explain to me what was the religion of the Gauls at the time of the Phocæan emigration. Samotes is recorded as their legislator. Legislation here includes, as it necessarily must in ages of barbarism, not only the civil institutions of the people, but likewise the religious. Yet neither the character nor the tenets, neither the period nor the country, nor indeed the existence of Samotes, have ever been ascertained. Ask the people who he was, and they will tell you that he came to them over the sea, long ago. Computation of time, past and future, never occupies, never occurs to, the barbarian. It was long ago that the old tree, against which his cabin leans, sprang up; long ago since the cabin was built; long ago since he was a child. Whatever is not visible to him, or was not, has feeble hold on his memory, and never enters into his calculation. As lawgiver of the Gauls, Samotes is acknowledged to have instructed them both in the ceremony of human oblations and in the creed of the metempsychosis; for these are mentioned together in the first opening of their history. But it appears to me that the metempsychosis, which is generally held as the basis of druidism, is adventitious. We shall find that this institution is composed of two extremely different and obstinately discordant parts. One, the result of ferocity, varies but little from what exists in the early state of most nations; which diversity may be accounted for, from their climate, their wants, their habits, and pursuits. The other is engrafted on its savage stock, by the steady but not sufficiently impressive hand of a gentle and provident philosophy. You ask me when? by whom? One word will solve both questions: by Samotes; by the man of Samos. Do you doubt that he ever was in Gaul? And do you think it probable that, with his fondness for travelling, his alacrity in inquiry, he would have resided many years in Italy, and have never once visited a

He grew instantly calm upon my compliment, and said with the most polite complacency, "Well! I am not a match for you Half-Athe-country so near to him, a country so singular in nians; but read this little volume by my friend Psyllos of Metaponton; it will open your eyes, I

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its customs, at least in the combination of them, if such customs then existed, a country on whose shores the most valiant of his own countrymen were landing? If at this early epoch the tribes of Gaul believed in the metempsychosis, would not sympathy, would not admiration, have impelled him thither? But if, on the contrary, the doctrine did not prevail, who introduced it? what author of greater weight? I am curious to learn his name or his country. Perhaps by knowing the one, we may guess the other, since the ideas he impressed and left behind him are stamped with a peculiar mark. It may be argued that, able to inculcate lastingly on the mind of his

Gallic proselytes, a dogma which seems to have been received but partially, and to have soon disappeared, where he lived in the full exercise of authority, he still was unable to abolish, as he would wish to do, their sanguinary rites. He was: for it is easier to learn than to unlearn what incessantly works and excites and agitates our passions. The advantages of the metempsychosis were perhaps the most striking of any that could be presented to warlike minds; to which minds, you must have remarked, O Pisander, advantages will present themselves more readily than disadvantages. Beside, the Druids, whom we can not well consider at any time a very enlightened order, or likely to see every consequence, every contingency, had no direct interest in suppressing such a doctrine. New colonies were endeavouring to establish themselves in their country; and colonies are the unfailing seed of wars. For, if they flourish, they require an accession of territory; if they do not flourish, they either turn into vagabonds and robbers, or employ violence to remove the obstacles that impede their industry. Something great then and something new was wanting, since the danger that impended was both new and great. Immolations before them on one side, and the sublime view of the metempsychosis on the other, what could either shake the confidence or abate the courage of the Gauls? A new body was new armour, beautiful, strong, in which they would elude the rage and laugh at the impotence of War. It was delightful to try other scenes of existence, to extinguish their burning wounds in the blood of their enemies, and to mount from the shields of their comrades into fresh life and glory. A religion thus compounded is absurd and contradictory, but contradiction and absurdity in religion are not peculiar to barbarians. The sacrifice of a human victim was deemed the most solemn and important duty, and they would rather abandon any other ceremony than this. They were savage; we are civilised: they fought, and their adversaries were to share their immortality; we fight to make others as abject as ourselves. They had leaders of proud spirit who raised them to the heavens: we have heavy oligarchs who bend us to the earth.

Rituals, in even the less ardent and intractable, are not soon, nor easily, nor all at once, resigned. We must cease then to marvel that the most impressive, the most awful, and perhaps the most universal of devotions, human sacrifice, should not have been overthrown by the declining years of Pythagoras. It is true he retained his faculties to the last; he retained also the energy of his mind; but the voluntary exile of Samos was purely a lawgiver in philosophy. His religion was not intolerant nor intrusive, but mainly adapted to the humbler offices of temperance and peace. Beyond this, little is known and much is feigned of him. It would have been well if historians had related to us more of what he did, and less of what he did not. If, instead of the story of his dying in a bean-field, through horror

of its impurity, they had carefully traced and pointed out his travels, they would neither have mentioned his voyage to India* nor have omitted his voyage to Gaul. The priests on the Nile | were at all times well acquainted with their brethren on the Indus and Ganges; and indeed I believe that all the great temples of the world have secret communications. Do not lift up your hands, my good Pisander! not underground, not magical, but opened from time to time, in cases of difficulty and danger, through confidential agents.+

All religions, in which there is no craft nor cruelty, are pleasing to the immortal Gods; because all acknowledge their power, invoke their presence, exhibit our dependence, and exhort our gratitude. Therefore let us never be remiss in our duty of veneration to those holy men, who not only manifest their good-will toward such as think and worship with them, but also toward the stranger at the steps of other altars. While orators and poets, and philosophers too, are riotous and quarrelsome, malicious and vindictive, Religion leads to herself, and calls her own, the priests of all persuasions, who extend their hands one to another from a distance, unrestricted by jealousy and undefiled by blood.

How great, O my friend, is our consolation, in | the certainty that our prayers and sacrifices are accepted! so long as the priests in our country and around us live fraternally, let us likewise be of the household. But if any devastating religion should spring up, any which rouses strife and spreads distrust, any which sunders man from man, that religion must be rejected by the Gods as wicked, and renounced by their worshippers as ineffectual. The claimants of such an imposition shall never have from me white flour or salt. Should you question why the milder creed had little effect in Gaul,-why the golden rules are not valued by the people as the precious relics of a departed master, I reply that in such a state of society it was impossible to bring them bodily into use. The priests alone (and it is not every priest who will readily sit down to be instructed) could profit by his knowledge of geometry, or would apply to practice or speculation his theory of numbers. A few of them are not utterly ignorant of either; and it is hence that the trickling may be traced. Men living in a state of barbarism and warfare would entertain but small respect for injunctions to abstain from any obvious and palatable food. Silence, forbearance, quietude, it can not be expected should be the inmates of a camp. Soldiers without regular supplies (in

*If Pythagoras had visited India, the learned men who

accompanied Alexander would have inquired after him, and would have given the result.

The use of gunpowder, for instance, if not of guns, was known to the priests in countries the most distant. and of the most different religions. The army of the Mace donians was smitten by its lightnings under the walls of the Oxydracians; the Gauls, and afterward the Persians, under the temple of Delphi.

which consists the main difficulty and on which | duced them to such habitudes of close reflection, depend the main advantages in the science of war) must subsist on whatever they can seize; and men without regular government (by which I can intend no other than of magistrates chosen by the people) would, if we consider the bean as employed in ballot, be ignorant of the lax and foreign interpretation.

As the fountains of the most celebrated rivers are neither easily discoverable nor large, so it often happens that things of the greatest moment, in the political and moral world, are derived from an obscure, from a remote, and from a slender origin. I have given you my opinion on the cause of the supposition; but having heard another, however less probable, I will report it.*

In the south of Italy, where Pythagoras resided, are several cities, Tarentum in particular, of Lacedæmonian foundation. One festival of this people, whose ancestors were distinguished for frugality, was nevertheless, even in the midst of primitive Lacedæmon, even in the bosom of Temperance herself, deformed with foul excess. It was called The Feast of the Nurses. They carried male infants to the Temple of Diana, and, after exposing themselves among the tents where the populace was assembled, fed them with the entrails of swine, which had been sacrificed, and with figs, vetches, and beans. Their morals, we may believe, were not rendered more austere by the fertility and invitations of a delicious climate. At a distance from Taygetos and Citharon, they were (allow me the expression) beyond the latitudes of checking breezes from the headlands of bluff morality; and the voice of the Syrens sounded in ears sealed only to the call of reprehension and reproof. The hunter of Laconia would have smiled to hear them imitate his shout, and tell the trembling Sybarite, their neighbour, that such were the shouts of Spartans. He would have wondered that terror should be excited in another by that which excited only ridicule in himself; he would have stared not a little at the start from the couch, and the rustle of roses on the marble floor.

Pythagoras could not say, Abstain from the city, abstain from the fellowship of the Tarentines; it would have exasperated them against him; but he might have heard related to him some instance of sensuality which happened at this festival, and might have said briefly, yet significantly, Abstain from beans. Ordinances have often been observed and commemorated far beyond the intent and expectation of their founder. Certain it is that, formerly as at present, in the popular states of Italy, the election and rejection of magistrates were signified by beans; and no less evidently was it the interest of the philosophical stranger to dissuade his auditors from the concerns of state. This, while it procured toleration and conciliated esteem, intro

as withheld them from being the agitators, and fitted them to become, by just degrees, the leaders of the commonwealth. After all, if they pursued any other line of conduct, he at least would escape uncensured, and might complete without juridical, or, what he would more have deprecated, popular molestation, his scheme of general reform.

'Abstain from beans' we have considered in a moral and political, but also in a religious point; it may easily be defended, by high authorities. However, I must express my doubts whether in the lifetime of Pythagoras his followers abstained from this article of food. Is it not probable that those who came after him took the letter for the spirit, as we know it to have happened in some other doctrines, and within a century from the founder's death? To abstain with rigour from things indifferent (and from some indeed they did abstain), may not appear consistent with the exercise of reason. Arrogant it may be thought in him who commanded, and infantine in those who obeyed. But, in the religions which have continued the longest, certain foods (it is said) are prohibited; and the observance of such prohibition is the moral cause of their duration. He who will not obey in what is easy, will not obey in what is difficult: but the subjects of these theocratical governments are every day refreshed with the exercise of salutary compliance. At the moment when a sense of duty is liable to be extinguished in others, in them it is sure to be excited: there is piety if they fast; if they satisfy their hunger there is piety. It appears to me, that the wisest and most provident of oriental legislators are in nothing more worthy of our esteem and veneration, than in the ordinance of these prohibitions. Can we ascertain what

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nations have, or what nations have not, been cannibals? Why does it revolt more strongly against our senses to eat a man than to kill one? crime in itself is surely not so great. Nature has fixed certain barriers, of which many seem fancifully chosen and arranged, against the irruption of our appetites. There are animals never brought upon our tables, although the flesh is said to be wholesome and the flavour grateful. It is needless to seek how first it happened that man violated the semblance of himself and of his Gods. Was it war, was it fanaticism, or was it famine, that impelled him to the accursed sacrifice? Pisander! Pisander! he had tasted the fatness of the lamb that he carried in his bosom : he had tempted the fawn by caresses from afar : it had licked his hand, and he had shed its blood!

Cannibals have been found where food was plentiful and the savage does not loathe for its ugliness the hugest serpent. There must be something, and it must be in the brute creation, which he shall fear to consume for the impiety of the deed.

The sacrifice of a human victim can only be perQu. whether any author now extant, excepting formed with the concurrence of prince or magisPsyllos in his epistle, mentions this. tracy. Of course Pythagoras could not oppose it,

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