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with the appellation: from this time the name of Philosopher became a title of honour amongst the learned, whilst that of Sophist sunk into universal contempt.

NUMBER IX.

I HAVE observed that Pythagoras, on his return from the East, took the island of Crete in his way; here he visited the famous philosopher Epimenides. Porphyry and Jamblichus must be greatly out in their chronology when they make Epimenides one of Pythagoras's scholars; Laertius's account is more probable, who says he was one of Pythagoras's masters, which naturally accounts for that philosopher's seeking an interview with him in Crete, as he did afterwards with Pherecydes on his death-bed in Syria in this interview, Pythagoras, no doubt, gave an account to Epimenides of the many marvellous things he had learnt in his travels, and so far the disciple may be said to have instructed his master; Epimenides himself was no small adept in the marvellous, and propagated a story through Greece of his having slept fifty. seven years in a cave, and that upon waking after his long repose he resumed his search for some sheep, which his father had sent him upon more than half a century before; the story does not say that he found these sheep, which probably were now become more difficult to recover than upon his first search; he returned however to his father's house, and was rather surprised upon discovering a new generation in possession, who thought no more of Epimenides

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than they did of his sheep: this sleeping philosopher however filled up the gap in his life pretty well, for Xenophanes says he lived to one hundred and fifty-seven years of age; and the Cretans, who are liars upon record, stretch their account to two hundred and ninety-nine years, modestly stopping short of three centuries. Deducting therefore fifty-seven years of sleep, during which he probably made no great advances in science, he might have occasion to go to school when he waked, and, though an old man, might be a young scholar under Pythagoras, if the credibility of the above story can once be admitted.

From the Olymptic Games, Pythagoras repaired to Samos, and opened school in a place called in the time of Antipho, (who is quoted by Laertius) Pythagora Hemicyclus. Here he began a practice he continued in Italy, of retiring to a cave without the town for the purpose of study, but in fact the idea was, like most others of his, oriental: hermits have it to this day, and if mortification is used to recommend religion, solitude may be chosen to set off wisdom. Pythagoras in a cave, visited in the dead of night with awful reverence and credulity, might pass stories, upon his hearers, which he could not risque in the face of the sun and the streets of the city.

He was not, however, so far sequestered from the concerns of the world, as to enjoy himself in his cave under the tyranny of Polycrates, now more oppressive than at his departure for Egypt. He thereupon resolved to go into Italy, and took Delos in his way; here he wrote the verses on the sepulchre of Apollo, which Porphyry records: from Delos he passed to Phlius, the ancient country of his family, and at Phlius, Cicero informs us he expounded several points of his new philosophy to

the tyrant Leo, who being struck with his doctrine demanded of him what branch of science he principally professed: Pythagoras replied, that he professed none, but was a philosopher: the name was new to Leo, and he desired to be informed of its signification, and wherein philosophers differed from other professors of the learned sciences: Pythagoras answered, 'that it appeared to him men were drawn to different objects and pursuits in life, as the Greeks were to their Olympic Games, some for glory, some for gain; at the same time,' says he, you must have observed that others attend without any view to either, for curiosity and amusement only; so we, who are travellers and adventurers, as it were, from another life and another nature, come amongst mankind, indifferent to the ordinary allurements of avarice or ambition, and studious of nothing but of the truth and essence of things: such may be called Lovers of Wisdom, or in one word Philosophers; and, like the unconcerned spectators above described, have no others to pursue, but the acquisition of knowledge and the rational enjoyments of a contemplative mind.'-In this reply he glances at his doctrine of the Metempsycosis.

In his progress towards Italy Pythagoras went to Delphi, that he might give the more authority to his precepts upon the pretence of his having received them from the priestess Theoclea.

In Italy he established himself for the remainder of his life, and taught there forty years, wanting one, in his colleges at Metapontum, Heraclea, and Croton. He staid twenty years at Croton before he went to Metapontum ; Milo, the famous Olympic victor, was one of his scholars at the former of these places. The fame of his doctrines drew a prodigious resort to his college; no less than six hundred disciples at one time attended his lectures

nightly he imposed rules of preparation and a system of discipline for his students, admirably contrived to inspire them with veneration for his person, and to train their minds to the exercises of patience and respect: he prescribed a probationary silence of five years, during which initiation they were not once admitted to the sight of their master, who in the mean time, like an invisible and superior spirit, governed them after the most absolute manner by mandates, which they never heard but through the chaunel of his subordinate agents: at length they were ushered with much ceremony into the awful presence. Such a course of discipline could not fail to prepare every mind, capable of undergoing it, for the marvellous stories, which at certain times he introduced into his lectures, touching the doctrine of the Metempsycosis, and the revelation of his own divinity: he scrupled not to tell them, that he was the Apollo of the Hyperboreans, and he corroborated his assertion by exposing to view his thigh composed of solid gold; his food, which was of the simplest sort, was conveyed to him in his recess in a manner so secret, that he was not discovered to be subject to the common appetites and necessities of human nature; his person was most comely and commanding, and his dress of studied cleanliness and simplicity; he was always clad in milk-white garments of the purest wool; he told them his soul had passed through several antecedent forms, and that it had originally received from Mercury, when it inhabited the body of Ethalides (son of that God) the privilege of migrating after the death of one body into that of another, with the faculty of remembering all the actions of its præterient states ; that these transmigrations were not immediate, but after intervals, in which his soul visited the regions of the other world, and was admitted to the society

of departed spirits; that in virtue of this prerogative, it passed after some time from the body of Ethalides into that of Euphorbus, who was wounded by Menelaus at the siege of Troy, and in his person was conscious of what had occurred in that of its predecessor; that it next appeared on earth in the person of Hermotimus, who gave proofs of his reminiscence by appealing to the shield suspended in the temple of Apollo by the hands of Menelaus ; from Hermotimus it passed into one Pyrrhus a fisherman, retaining the like consciousness; and lastly, it had lodged itself where it now was, possessing all the accumulated recollection of its past transmigrations.

Daring as those fictions were, still they were credited; for the powers of his mind were wonderful, and the authority he had established over his hearers by superior wisdom and ingenious device was unbounded; the curious researches of his study in the East, and the passion he had there contracted for the marvellous and supernatural, inspired him with the ambition of passing himself upon the world for something above human; he had trained on the credulity of his disciples with such art, that he found it would bear whatever he thought proper to impose; he was sensible he transcended all men living in wisdom, and he resolved to assume a superiority of nature also. The idea of transmigration was not started by Pythagoras; it was of eastern origin, but too far out of sight for any then alive to trace it to its source: he told his scholars he should revisit the earth in two hundred and six years after his death.

Doctrines like these were hard to be received, but he so well balanced fiction with truth, that they could not be separated at the time; the strong fortified the weak so effectually, that both took place together; in mathematics, astronomy, and moral philosophy, he was an unrivalled master; his golden

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