Ritter, Heinrich 1838. The History of Ancient Philosophy. Vol. 1. Translated by Alexander J. W. Morrison. Oxford: D. A. Talboys. [Google Books]
The first commencement of religious dissent will, accordingly, be placed somewhere about the same time as Thales and Pythagoras philosophised in Greece. This supposition recommends itself the more strongly, the more certain it is that the importance of Buddhism, in the general history of the world, falls considerably later; for it was in all probability in the fourth century before Christ that it penetrated into Ceylon, and into the east of Asia in the fifth century after Christ. (Ritter 1836: 104)
The date of the Buddha mensurated with the measuring stick of Greek philosophy.
On this subject more hereafter. At present we shall only observe, that Colebrooke, Trans. R. A. S. i. 577, engaged to give thereafter proof that the Indians were the teachers of the Greeks in philosophy, and especially of Pythagoras; and in fact his argument, according to the outline he has given of it, is not ill-conceived. He purposes, in the first place, to shew that the Indian philosophy has more affinity with the olden than with the more recent philosophy of Greece; and as it is not probable that, in the interval between their earlier and later philosophical schools, the Greeks had imported their philosophy to the Indians, it will, he says, follow that it is more probable that they made the communication to the Greeks. Now, in this argument the question is, to prove that the affinity of the nature [|] alleged actually existed, and that too in such a degree as could not be attributed to the common affinity of all nations. On this Colebrooke has undoubtedly said something, but far from enough. He is perhaps better acquainted with Indian than with Greek philosophy. For the simple fact, that he draws the philosophy of Pythagoras from Ocellus, and his doctrines of Heraclitus from very suspicious sources (p. 574), shews at least that he is not on the surest road. Again, he holds that the resemblance between the Pythagorean and Indian philosophy, in that both distinguish between efficient and material causes, is too considerable to be accidental. Accidental most assuredly it is not; but the cause thereof is the uniformity of the human mind. Scarcely two languages can be discovered which do not distinguish between matter and cause. (Ritter 1836: 114-115, footnote)
This Ocellus was of course also translated by Thomas Taylor. Colebrook, Henry Thomas 1827. On the Philosophy of the Hindus. Part IV. Transactions of the Royal Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1: 549-579. DOI: 10.1017/S0950473700000422
Of a philosophy of the seven sages, no one will speak who can distinguish philosophy from the other creations of the human mind. All that was perfected was a certain knowledge of life, which they drew from their own intercourse with men, and transmitted, for the benefit of future generations, in short proverbial sentences. To look for any deeper wisdom among them would not be justifiable; or even to draw from them any inference as to the moral character of the Greeks of the period; since the collection is far from being trustworthy, and the association itself of the seven sages, whose members are often differently given, belongs rather to the providence of fable than of history. (Ritter 1836: 143)
So that's why every mention of the seven sages is so superficial.
The experimental study of nature originated in medical science; and the first physicians among the Greeks, who were in any degree of a scientific character of mind, are to be found in two schools originally independent of philosophy, nearly about the time of Thales and Pythagoras. Still more, however, than this little-known natural-history does the oldest history of the Greeks demand our attention. This, such as it came from the hands of Cadmos, Pherecydes, and Hecatæus, is not long posterior to Thales, and seems to have been less removed from a philosophical character than the historical composition of later days. For philosophy and history had a common source in the poetico-religious theogonies and cosmogonies, and in the legends of gods and heroes. This common origin they could not at their first formation belie. (Ritter 1836: 144)
Familiar themes from Gomperz. Cadmus "was the first Greek hero and [...] slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles"; Hecataeus "was an early Greek historian and geographer".
The first colonists of Greece were unquestionably from the East, and brought with them into their new settlements a genuine oriental character. Subsequently such a contrast was established between those who had emigrated and those who had remained behind, that the Greeks called the latter Barbarians. They had different languages, different customs. The later influence took place at the time when the Greek nation were already constituted a people, no longer receiving into itself any foreign element. (Ritter 1836: 147)
As if a people stops being a people when it receives foreign elements among themselves.
The principal points for our present purpose are, religious sentiments and ideas, and scientific inquiries. As to religious ideas, it does not appear to me so likely and so natural as others have thought, that they should have been either eagerly sought after by the Greeks, or willingly communicated by the Barbarians: for man generally is not ready to lay open the secrets of his inmost soul, and to reveal the religious hopes and fears by which he is swayed, or anxious to learn those of others. The mere outward and ceremonial practices, and the tales connected therewith, are quite another matter, and one of little interest to us. (Ritter 1836: 149)
Religious ideas are not as easily communicated across cultures as some think.
Still more disposed are we to doubt that the Greeks received from the East any philosophical communications. In general the communication of philosophy is exceedingly difficult; and, even in the present day, we see how possible it is for a particular system to be confined exclusively to a single people, without the neighbouring nations, whose relations with it are yet many and various, and even of a scientific kind, receiving from it the slightest impulsion. (Ritter 1836: 150)
The communication of philosophical ideas even more difficult.
These eastern masters have been assigned to the very earliest of Greek philosophers. Thales, it is said, received his doctrines from Egyptian priests. The authorities for this assertion are modern, Plutarch and Jamblichus; while it is unsupported by any correspondence which can be shewn between the doctrines of Thales and Egyptian opinions. On this account a Phœnician origin of the Thaletic lore has been more earnestly contended for. Thales was descended, in fact, from a Phœnician family, and had travelled through Asia, probably to Phœnicia; is it not thene extremely probable, if not certain, that he derived his doctrine, "all things are produced from water," from Phœnicia, where, as throughout Asia generally, this doctrine was very ancient? To our minds, we must confess, these conjectures do not throw much light on the matter; we consider it much more likely, that Thales, starting from his own Greek style of reflection, arrived independently at the doctrinal system which he put forward; especially when we remember that Aristotle not only says, but actually knows, nothing of its foreign [|] origin, since he is disposed to connect the doctrine with Greek ideas of a similar nature. (Ritter 1836: 154-155)
Similar themes, I'm sure, will come up with Pythagoras, who is likewise said to have learned all the mysteries of both Phoenicia and Egypt.
Still more liable to suspicion is the assertion, that Pythagoras derived his philosophy from his intercourse with the East. It is wholly unsupported by historical authorities. The oldest testimonies are nearly two hundred years younger than Pythagoras. No one, acquainted with the degree in which the marvellous prevails in the statements concerning Pythagoras, will be disposed to build at all upon the accounts given of his travels into Syria, Babylonia, Persia, India, and even to the Thracians and the Druids in Gaul; they all rest on equal warranty. (Ritter 1836: 155)
The "oldest testimon[y]" - "Isocrates first mentions his Egyptian travels: Laud. Bus. p. 227." (ibid, 155, footnote 2)
The probability of the story is therefore the only test of its truth; and in this respect it seems to be not absolutely incredible that Pythagoras visited Egypt, and there formed an acquaintance with Egyptian opinions. However, the conjectures of the earliest Greeks as to this Egyptian origin had reference solely to the doctrine of the metempsychosis - of which Herodotus gave it as his opinion that it originally came from Egypt. By this opinion of Herodotus we are no more bound than by that other opinion of his, that the Greek gods were indebted to Egypt for their origin; for it is the judgment of one strongly biased in favour of Egyptian antiquity. (Ritter 1836: 155)
That Pythagoras was taught by Egyptian priests may be spurious: "Herodotus expresses this as merely his personal opinion" (ibid, 155, footnote 3).
Moreover, it has been pretended that still further traces of Egyptian or oriental doctrines are discoverable in certain customs and the phraseology of the Pythagoreans; but any one who will take the trouble strictly to examine the statements transmitted on this point, will find them to be for the most part of a late date, very inconsistent, and the most important contradicted by earlier authorities, who were contemporary with living Pythagoreans. (Ritter 1836: 156)
"There is one exception: the prohibition, common to the Pythagoreans and Egyptians, of the use of woollen for grave-clothes: Herod. ii. 81." (ibid, 156, footnote).
In matters of this kind it is easier to adduce this or that testimony than to discover an historical fact; we shall therefore conscientiously abstain from making any use of such testimonies as, originating in hearsay, were brought forward in later times, by men of unscientific habits of mind, for the sole purpose of accrediting a prejudice; and in the particular case of the metempsychosis, the only decision we can venture to come to is, that it was common to both Egyptians and Pythagoreans. (Ritter 1836: 156)
That's that "lore", the river greeting him by name, appearing in two distant cities on the same day, etc. In due time I may come to a fuller picture of who exactly originated what aspect.
But what further inference can be drawn from this community of doctrine? Without appealing to the fact, that the doctrine of metempsychosis is diffused almost co-extensively with the belief in the soul's immortality, we shall only call attention to the circumstance that this tenet was not unknown to the Greeks, even before the time of Pythagoras. It is attributed to his teacher Pherecydes, [|] and to the Orphicers, with whom Herodotus connects the Pythagorean orgies. Herodotus himself acknowledges an earlier diffusion of this doctrine among the Greeks, since he distinguishes its earlier from its more recent propagators; and by the latter none but Pythagoreans can be meant. If, therefore, Pythagoras introduced any new light on this point among the Greeks, which he had derived from Egyptian wisdom, he must at least have acquired and communicated some new form of this doctrine different from that previously current. Of this, however, we can discover no vestige in the philosophy which usually passes under his name; on the contrary, it is, as there exhibited, in its most essential points so peculiarly the creation of Greek mind, that we can only arrive at its true meaning by a long and profound study of that portion of the mental history of Greece. Moreover, the metempsychosis [|] plays only a very subordinate part in the entire system. (Ritter 1836: 156-158)
This "community of doctrine" is phraseologically on par with Peirce's "community of inquirers". Indeed, metempsychosis assumes the immortality of the soul. But, then, the Greeks had Hades before Pythagoras. Ritter's general moto seems to be that the Greeks didn't have to borrow anything significant from the East, and the similarities come from, as he put it above, "the uniformity of the human mind". How subordinate it is to the pythagorean system (of philosophy), is as of yet uncertain. It was certainly, for a long time, among the primary associations - as in, the main thing the first editions of Encyclopædia Britannica had to say about him and his followers.
These conjectures rest in part on similarities of doctrine, in part on difficulties and obscurities in the course of the development of Greek philosophy. The frailty of the former foundation has seldom been fully perceived. A certain general resemblance will always be found between the various evolutions of philosophical ideas; for the universal effort of the human mind to attain to scientific insight must necessarily give rise to a similarity of results; and in most instances nothing beyond a general resemblance has been pointed out. Indeed, when we enter into the nicer details into which the similar doctrines were respectively carried out, we often find the greatest discrepancies, and those, too, pertaining to the most essential points; so as utterly to exclude the possibility of any transmission of doctrine. (Ritter 1836: 161)
A fuller statement on his views on "the uniformity of the human mind". It calls to mind the Peircean tenet that the community of inquirers will eventually reach a similarity of opinion.
In matters of this nature, if any where, a profound and searching inquiry is indispensable; and the superficial judgment of mere dilettanti absolutely to be rejected - for such are seldom qualified either accurately to test the similar and the dissimilar, or to recognise the essential, and are only too often misled by single expressions, the value of which they are far from being in a condition rightly to estimate. (Ritter 1836: 161)
That is, disregard my opinions.
Still more startling is it to find the doctrines of Pythagoras and Heraclitus referred to the same source - the fire-worship of the Magi. For, even assuming that two systems so widely different did issue from the same transmitted dogma, it must, notwithstanding, be conceded that it was so obscurely communicated as to admit of such opposite expositions, and was consequently undeserving the name of instruction. Moreover, the resemblances which exist between the Heraclitic and Oriental doctrines are by no means of such a nature as to justify a decided inference of their affinity: contrariwise, they consist, in part, of a very general view of the divinity of fire, the application of which by Heraclitus differs widely from that of the Persian fire-worshippers, - in part, of very unimportant conceptions, which may easily be found in common among those who never were brought into contact. (Ritter 1836: 163)
The footnotes specify how Georg Friedrich Creuzer compared the fragments of Heraclitus with some Egyptian and Persian symbols, but it is probably that Ritter is also going to explode the story of Pythagoras studying under the Persian magi.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed in later times "the obscure," flourished about the 69th Olymp. He was descended, it would appear, from an illustrious family; at least, if we may infer so much from the aristocratic tone of his sentiments and feelings - his contempt for the multitude - and the distinguished position assigned to him in political affairs. He is represented as being of a gloomy and melancholy temperament; which seems to have been the source of the bitter censures he passed upon the most illustrious of his fellow-citizens, and of his contempt generally for the business and pursuits of men. The teacher of Heraclitus in philosophy has been variously given: some mentioning as such Hippasus of Metapontium, who is elsewhere called a Pythagorean; others Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school; both statements being equally [|] destitute of credibility. There is more truth in the statement that Heraclitus was acquainted with the doctrines of anterior poets and philosophers; for whom, however, he expressed an unqualified contempt, as having mere erudition for their object, and not wisdom; and by an open reprobation of idolatry he set himself in opposition to the opinions of the multitude. With this contempt for the opinions of others, he clung the more tenaciously to his own; and he is classed by Aristotle among those with whom their own opinions are as valid as science itself. (Ritter 1836: 230-231)
The impression I got from Gomperz was pretty gangster, e.g. "He contemned the worship of images, which was as if "a man should chatter to a stone wall;"" (Gomperz 1901a: 60). The source for Hippasus possibly having been his teacher is "Suidas s.v. 'Ηράκλ., looking probably to the account of Arist. Met. i. 3." (ibid, 230, footnote 3). His contempt for Pythagoras, among others, is so famous, it is given on the Wikipedia page for pythagoreanism: "Pythagoras, the son of Mnesarchus, practised inquiry beyond all other men and selecting of these writings made for himself a wisdom or made a wisdom of his own: a polymathy, an imposture." As to the "anterior poets and philosophers" he was acquainted with, "He mentions Thales, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Pittacus, Bion, Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Hecataeus." (ibid, 231, footnote 1)
The Pythagorean philosophy [pp. 326-420]
The early activity of mind displayed in these colonial states is sufficiently attested by the celebrated codes of Zeleucus and Charondas; the polished culture of poetry and rhetoric, in Sicily especially; and lastly, the medical school established at Croton. To judge from the number of citizens of these states who were crowned in the [|] Olympic games, their wealth and prosperity must have been considerable: it, however, degenerated into luxury and effeminacy. (Ritter 1836: 326-327)
Both are curious: Zaleucus "was the Greek lawgiver of Epizephyrian Locri and a Pythagorean philosopher", and Charondas "was a celebrated lawgiver of Catania in Sicily [and] some identify him as a pupil of Pythagoras". I've read glimpses about the medical school, and Croton's wealth and prosperity is naturally renowned.
Clemens Alex. Strom. i. 309. Cf. Diod. Sic. xii. 9. This assumption is not well warranted: indeed, the whole chronology of Pythagoras, and of the stories connected with him, is extremely vague. His story travelled through tradition, to be afterwards treated as an historical romance. That this was the case in some degree with the disciples of Plato and Aristotle, but still more so with the new Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists, is, I think, unquestionable. (Ritter 1836: 327, footnote)
Vagueness and uncertainty all around.
Croton, an Achæan colony, received an illustrious accession in the person of Pythagoras, who was born at Samos, 49th Olymp., - a sage whose [|] descent is traced back to the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. His biography is enshrouded with a thicker veil of mythical obscurity than that of any other of the earliest philosophers; and the fabulous legends of which he is the subject are nearly as ancient as history itself. Little light, consequently, is thrown upon his real history by the minute details of his fortunes and deeds transmitted from the last days of antiquity, which are a mere tissue of vague and varying anecdotes and fables, rarely furnishing any information as to the personal character of the man. (Ritter 1836: 327-328)
Perhaps also why he is much more curious and interesting than the rest. The vagueness and uncertainty make the forbidden fruit all the sweeter.
The intellectual attainments of Pythagoras were, according to the concurrent testimony of the different traditions, far from ordinary. Of the particular objects which attracted his inquiries a pretty general notion may be formed, although we are unable to measure the extent to which his acquaintance with them may have reached. Pythagoras is usually classed among the most eminent founders of scientific mathematics; [|] and the common account is in some degree confirmed by the general scope of his philosophical labours, and by the particular statement that Pythagoras was chiefly occupied with the determination of extension and gravity, and in measuring the ratios of musical tones, as well as by the many astronomical discoveries ascribed to him. Nevertheless, the probability of all these statements depends more on the consideration of the course of scientific development pursued by the Pythagorean school than upon the individual authorities on whom they rest. (Ritter 1836: 328-329)
By all accounts an uncommon genius. There is nary a history of mathematics without his name in it. The determination of "extension" probably has to do something with the Platonic solids. Gravity, on the other hand, I have not seen anyone mention - although it may probably naturally proceed from his astronomy or cosmology.
And it is on similar grounds that we are not indisposed to attribute to Pythagoras certain essays on the healing art, which, however, seem to have been confined to a few experiments upon the effects of music on the human mind. (Ritter 1836: 329)
Also why his name appears frequently in relation with music therapy. Footnote reads: "Porphyr. Vi. Pyth. 30, 33. Jamb. v. Py. 164, 244. It is sufficient barely to mention, that the practice of magical forms and other devices of the art has been imputed to pythagoras." (ibid, 329, fn 6)
But in all this diversity of acquirements and skill, there is less, seemingly, that is indicative of the certain point of interest - his personality - than in the cycle of tradition which is spread around his story. On this head, all the fables and anecdotes recited reveal to us the saint - the worker of miracles - the teacher of a divine wisdom: his very birth is marvellous and wonderful; some accounts making him a son of Apollo, others of hermes. Whenever he appeared, a divine glory shone around him: he is said to have exhibited a golden thigh; Abaxes the Scythian came to him flying on a golden arrow; he was seen at different places at the same time; wild beasts were obedient to his call; the river-god held converse with him; he received from Hermes the gift of the recollection of his previous existence, and the power to awaken the same remembrance in others; he heard the harmony of thes pheres; and his sayings passed for unerring wisdom. (Ritter 1836: 330)
A solid run-down of the "lore" attributed to Pythagoras. I've highlighted what appears new to me: that a divine glory shone around him calls to mind those heretical sects that believed that Jesus was a luminous being; that wild beasts came to his call sounds like something out of a Disney animation but what is probably meant is the taming of a murderous bear; the river says "Hello Pythagoras" - now a river-god, and it sounds (probably falsely) like they held a conversation; that he could awaken memories of previous lives in others is completely new to me. All of these, and others, I wish to trace down to their most probable sources, and will eventually compare the different iterations of in 19th century literature available on Google Books, item by item.
In the statements concerning his musical and gymnastic skill, it is possible that some confusion may exist, and that the philosopher has been confounded with the athlete and musician of the same name. There were also others of this name. Diog. L. viii. 46, 47. Aristox. Harm. Elem. ii. 36. ap. Meibom. (Ritter 1836: 330, fn1)
Hence why there's a separate Wikipedia entry for Pythagoras (boxer)). Diogenes Laertios lists a bunch of guys named Pythagoras. Much like Jesus, it appears to have been a fairly common name at the time.
Who now will wonder that he received from the Crotoniats the title of Hyperborean Apollo? At all events, it is clear that such fables and opinions could only have for their [|] object one who either himself laid claim to, or to whom at least his associates and followers attributed, a more than human fellowship with the divine. On this point there are yet on record the most unquestionable testimonies of antiquity, of which we shall only adduce the earliest - the deposition of Herodotus, who speaks of a certain secret worship of the Pythagoreans - the Pythagorean orgies - and of a holy legend or formulary of this worship. Now, when we find that among the Pythagoreans the science of numbers, geometry, and music, and even medicine and gymnastics, including dancing, were in the closest manner connected with their sacred rites, we cannot well doubt that the central point of all science and knowledge of the Pythagoreans, and of Pythagoras himself, is to be found in the secret worship which he instituted, and which his followers regarded as holier than the public service of the gods as regulated and established by the state. (Ritter 1836: 330-331)
"Hyperborean Apollo" signifying, that he was himself Apollo, having come down from his northern (hyperborean) home, possibly the island of Balisia, Balcia, or Baltia (now Heligoland), whence the Baltic Sea got its name (vt Eesti entsüklopeedia, I, 480; 825). Very iffy stuff. The "Pythagorean orgies" are new, though not surprising, considering the affinities with Bacchic and Orphic orgies. That all the arts attributed to the pythagoreans should partake in some form in said orgies sounds only natural. Those "public services [...] established by the state" are mentioned in the very first line of the Golden Verses - "Honor the immortal gods as it is established by the law."
The accounts given by later writers of the formation of his mental character introduce us into a field so wide, that we are lost in its boundless expansion. In geometry, his teachers were the Egyptians; in arithmetic, the Phœnicians; in astronomy, the Chaldæans; in holy things and morality, the Magi: thus nothing is left for Greece to do, and Pythagoras is presented as one wholly taught and formed by the wisdom of the East. (Ritter 1836: 332)
One can already guess where this is heading, given what I gleaned from the introduction. Ritter is unsatisfied with the accounts which place the origin of Greek thought outside of Greece. Pythagoras might as well be the prime target of this criticism, given these notorious attributions.
Connected herewith is the statement, that Pythagoras was the disciple of the Phœenician Moschos or Mochos, the first author of the atomic doctrine, according to Posidonius. Moschos is by some taken to be Moses, which is again connected with the assertion that Pythagoras must have had an aquaintance with the Jewish religion. (Ritter 1836: 332, fn1)
A very familiar theme. One of Estonia's best respected literary authors wrote in one of his critical pieces a musing, "Pythagoras might even have been a circumcised jew" ("Pythagoras olnud isegi ümberlõigatud juut"; Tammsaare 1924: 119). Confounding the medicine man Mochus and Moses might have been one of the sources of this error, but there are surely more such sources, given the Christian over-attachment and fascination with judaism. Ficus and Cudworth probably make this error.
On the other hand, again, teachers have been assigned to him from among the Greek learned: first of all, two sages of the olden time, Creophilus and Hermodamas, names otherwise wholly unknown; and Bias and Thales of the seven sages, besides Anaximander the physiologer; and, according to the opinion most extensively current, Pherecydes the mythograph. Of [|] these rumours and opinions, two only deserve a detailed examination; that which represents Pythagoras to have been taught by the Egyptians, and that which makes him the scholar of Pherecydes. (Ritter 1836: 332-333)
Currently Wikipedia mentions Pherecydes, Thales, Anaximander and Thales - I've ordered them according to my own sense of how frequently they are identified as Pythagor's teachers. Creophylus of Samos and Hermodamas of Samos are new - the latter doesn't even have an English-language Wikipedia page (Creophylus' page links to the French page).
Furthermore, there was a legend, somewhat ancient, that Pythagoras had, before he arrived at Croton, been on long and distant travels; which indeed, so far as probability is at stake, there is no ground to question. Moreover, Samos was in constant intercourse with Egypt, partly through the commerce of private individuals, partly through the political relations maintained therewith by the tyrant Polycrates, with whom Pythagoras is brought into connexion by tradition. We cannot, [|] therefore, deny the probability that Pythagoras may have been in Egypt. But we must be cautious in arguing further, that therefore he was initiated in all the secret lore of the Egyptian priesthood, both because the evidence is very insufficient, and the Egyptian institution of castes deprives the inference of all likelihood. Besides, a very superficial acquaintance, on the part of Pythagoras, with Egyptian usages and opinions, is quite sufficient to account for all that is usually referred to that source. (Ritter 1836: 333-334)
So, on the one hand, Samos was commercially connected with Egypt but on the other hand what little we know of pythagoreanism, it is not necessary to suppose that he was taught by the priests and initiated into their mysteries. Their "public usage" he could very well have become acquainted with without even leaving Samos. This interpretation, of course, neglects all the other connections with Egypt, e.g. music(al instruments), the bean stuff, and books of the dead. Though, even then, admittedly, direct contact with priesthood is not absolutely necessary.
On this head we have only one point more to notice - that symbolical mode of expression common to the Pythagoreans and Egyptians. Now, a symbolical language may naturally grow out of any cult, whether public or mystical; with this single difference, that in the former the meaning of the symbol is open and evident to all, in the latter intelligible by the adept alone. Now, so far as we are able to judge, there was only a very distant resemblance between the Egyptian and Pythagorean symbolism. In the Pythagorean the predominant symbol is numerical; there are, it is true, other symbolical rules of life, but they have completely the colour of Greek practical wisdom and Greek relations of life; and it is only in the geometrical symbols that a remote correspondence with the Egyptian hieroglyphics can be discovered. (Ritter 1836: 334-335)
Very keen to find out what those remote correspondences were between pythagorean numerical symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Among the opinions of Pythagoras, the doctrine of metempsychosis is by these accounts referred to the instructions of Pherecydes. Thus, we are at liberty to choose whether to derive his acquaintance with this tenet from Egypt or Pherecydes; otherwise no trace can be discovered that Pythagoras adopted into his philosophemes aught else from the mythic narratives of Pherecydes. (Ritter 1836: 335)
It's an old term but it checks out.
If, indeed, we do not duly and rightfully appreciate the effects operated on the mind of Pythagoras by the character of his age, we shall be able satisfactorily to account for the manner in which, by his own scientific efforts, he was enabled to become, what it is impossible not to regard him, - one who exercised no little influence on the scientific intelligence and moral sentiments, not merely of contemporaries, but even of after-times. (Ritter 1836: 336)
Indeed, very well put. Given the immense interest laid on pythagoreanism throughout the ages, it is not out of the question that a large share of Western culture bears, under its folds, a pythagorean stamp.
We find, moreover, that tradition itself allows Pythagoras to draw his religious conceptions from a Greek source; for besides that his secret lore is not seldom associated with the Orphic mysteries, he is also represented as having in Crete been initiated in all the mystical secrets of the Idean cave; and another statement makes him to receive from the Delphic priestess, Empedoclea, his ethical doctrines - i.e. his ascetical precepts, which have more or less a religious reference. (Ritter 1836: 337)
Some sources claim that Pythagoras himself had authored some piece of writing (perhaps a song or hymns) in the Orphic tradition.
Lobeck, in the Aglaoph., has, it is well known, referred to Orphic Bacchic mysteries to the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras. There is perhaps too much asserted or denied in this. When, however, in opposition to this view, the connexion of Pythagoras and the worship of Apollo is adduced as decisive, and, with Krische (p. 22, &c., 33, &c.), it is asserted that Pythagoras never in any respect, but only after his death certain degenerated [|] disciples, had any thing to do with Bacchic mysteries, we must in that case form a very different opinion of Pythagoras from that which has been recorded by the mouth of his disciples. We do not pretend to determine the matter; yet we would call attention to the fact, that not merely the cult of Apollo, but that of Hermes also, is mentioned in several important legends about Pythagoras, which would seem to refer to a connexion with Samo-thracian mysteries; and that in Philolaus, the truest disciple of the Pythagorean philosophy, a reference to the Bacchic cult occurs (Böckh, p. 36). All this favours a conjecture in itself probable, that these new-coined mysteries consisted of an eclectical combination and more general interpretation of earlier cults. (Ritter 1836: 337-338, fn3)
My first time meeting a mention of the cult of Hermes but then again probably most of the Greek gods had their cults and mysteries. I'll bear this little piece of trivia in mind going forward.
That his religious views were promulgated in a system of secret doctrines, is indeed implied in the very term orgies, by which Herodotus denominates them: but we are further expressly and credibly informed that the Pythagoreans adopted the maxim, "Not unto all should all be made known." These orgies seem to have found their way into Greece Proper - at least Herodotus speaks of them as of something commonly known - but it was in the Italian colonies that they were most extensively diffused. (Ritter 1836: 338)
Another aspect that makes the fruit sweeter - it is forbidden, secret. The maxim makes all the more sense with regard to how Pythagoras reportedly held separate orations to the men, women, and children of Croton.
We shall pass over the miraculous stories of his appearance in Croton - of the god-like veneration he there received - of the moral change his precepts and example suddenyl affected - and shall merely observe, that he seems to have enjoined a peculiar mode of private life on all who sought [|] his society. The mere designation of this institution, which was afterwards observed by his followers, is sufficient to convict of exaggeration those statements of later writers, which represent Pythagoras himself as operating an entire revolution in the form of government, not only in Croton, but likewise in the other Italian cities. (Ritter 1836: 338-339)
On this we are referred to "Plat. de Rep. x. p. 600." (ibid, 339, fn1): "Well, then, if no public service is credited to him, is Homer reported while he lived to have been a guide in education to men who took pleasure in associating with him and transmitted to posterity a certain Homeric way of life just as Pythagoras was himself especially honoured for this, and his successors, even to this day, denominating a certain way of life the Pythagorean, are distinguished among their contemporaries?" (II, p. 439, in Paul Shorey's translation).
This, however, does not exclude the probability that Pythagoras did communicate to his followers principles of politics, the aim and object of which was a change in the constitution of the several states: at least, much is told us of the political maxims of Pythagoras, which appear to have had a leaning toward aristocracy; and if we call to mind the fate of the later Pythagoreans, both appear probable; which indeed the intimate connexion of ancient religion with politics would also lead us to expect in the case of the Pythagorean orgies. Only we must guard against entertaining an opinion that the secret society of the Pythagoreans was wholly of a political nature; on the contrary, all the probable accounts on this head justify us in seeking the bond and centre of the Pythagorean community in some secret religious doctrine. (Ritter 1836: 339)
The leaning towards aristocracy is especially emphasized in some Soviet accounts of the Pythagorean league. They, as dedicated dialectical materialists, of course, completely neglect the religious aspect, which is why it rings awfully hollow. Here, on "the political maxims of Pythagoras" we are referred to "Varro ap. August. de Ordine, ii. 54 Posidon. ap. Senec. Ep. 90." (ibid, 339, fn2) - These I as of yet do not know how to get a hold of, but will probably meet again in future readings.
A peculiar practice is imputed to Pythagoras: that he first of all examined the physiognomy of the candidates for initiation; he then habituated them, during the period of probation, to a long silence (έχεμυθία). The periods of the several initiations are given differently; and indeed in such matters we must not expect to be able to speak with positive certainty. It is probable, however, and indeed consistent with the general constitution of such associations, that the Pythagoreans were divided, according to the grade of initiation, into different classes, the denominations of which we are utterly ignorant of, except that very general classification into Exoterici and Esoterici. (Ritter 1836: 340)
Which is why Pythagoras frequently crops up in histories of physiognomy (e.g. Arved Leinbock's).
In such holy fraternities it is not surprising that much should have been supported by an appeal to the respect entertained by the associates for the original founder; and this, in all probability, is the explication of the far-famed αύτὀς ἔφα of the Pythagoreans. (Ritter 1836: 340)
Perhaps not, but it is remarkable enough to have entered into lexicons of foreign words - e.g. autos epha in (Haljaspõld 1930: 64).
To the community of living practised by the Pythagoreans belonged the common meals (συσσιτία), for which particular sorts of food appear to have been enjoined by their first founder; though, indeed, the statements on this point are far from unanimous. (Ritter 1836: 341)
On which account I caught a similarity in Campanella: "While they are eating a young man reads a book from a platform" (1901: 153-154).
Lastly, they had also certain peculiar ordinances to be observed in the burial of adepts. The asserted community of property looks like an exaggeration of later days; for it is contradictory of many anecdotes of the private wealth of individual members, which are more probable than the general accounts. (Ritter 1836: 341)
Looking forward to these many anecdotes. "The statement might have originated in part in the custom of the Pythagoreans of contributing to the expense of the common meal, and in part from their maxim, All things are common among friends." (ibid, 341, fn3)
The prohibition of beans for food, according to a probably spurious work of Aristotle (Diog. L. viii. 34), which was an Egyptian custom, according to Herodotus, ii. 37. Aristoxenus, on the other hand, says, Pythagoras recommended beans before all other food: Gell. iv. 4. (Ritter 1836: 341, fn1)
Is absolutely nothing certain?
Beyond this, we must confess entire ignorance as to what may have been the subject or the result of the philosophical labours of Pythagoras; for those of ancient writers who were best and most critically acquainted with the doctrinal systems of the earlier philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, do not attribute to Pythagoras any particular philosopheme; and, on the other hand, the statements of later times, which give to Pythagoras personally the doctrines of all the Pythagoreans, do not deserve the slightest consideration on this head. The utmost that even conjecture can hazard, is to suppose that the germ of the philosophical view which was subsequently carried out by his disciples and followers was pre-existent in the earlier lessons of Pythagoras. (Ritter 1836: 342)
And here, the first to call himself a philosopher, turns out to have no particular philosophy of his own.
An opinion has been put forward, that the gradations in the Pythagorean fraternity had reference to the communication of philosophy, and that particular doctrines were revealed to the esoterici alone, and others to the exoterici; but to all absolutely [|] without the pale it was not allowable to communicate any philosophical tenet. Many allusions to this point are contained in various stories of members expelled the society on the grounds of talkativeness, and of the unhappy destiny of those who divulge the mystic doctrines. (Ritter 1836: 342-343)
Be quiet!
Aristoxenus merely remarks generally, that the Pythagoreans had a rule, not to communicate all to all: but the passage is from a treatise on education, where it most probably had a particular application. Diog. L. viii. 15. Aristotle, according to Jambl. V. Py. 31, states that, among the deepest secrets of the Pythagoreans, it was taught that there are three species of intellectual creatures, God and man, and an intermediate, to which class Pythagoras belonged: this, it is to be hoped, no one will consider to be philosophical. There is more of a philosophical character undoubtedly in what Plato (Phæd. p. 22) instances a secret doctrine; but yet this is only in a mythical garb, and cannot with certainty be referred to the Pythagoreans. Cf. Cratyl. p. 400. (Ritter 1836: 343, fn1)
Hmm. Incommunicability sounds just fine for me. The "Gods, men, and creatures like Pythagoras" does not appear to be very deep philosophically, true enough. The instances in Plato's dialogues are equally unenlightening: Phaedo p. 22 appears to be about the association of ideas, and Cratylus p. 400 appears to be about the "body is a tomb" issue.
This diffusion in Greece Proper of Pythagorean doctrines was occasioned by the disastrous fate of their society. The Pythagoreans, we are told (for the truth of all particulars we cannot pretend to vouch), had acquired considerable influence in the politics of Croton, and given to its constitution an almost perfect form of aristocracy. Their influence is also represented as extending to Metapontum, Locri, Sybaris, and Tarentum, and as especially inimical to all tyrannical governments. About this time one Tetys had established himself in the tyranny of Sybaris, and the unfriendly nobles had fled to Croton. The refusal of the Crotoniats, at the instance of the Pythagoreans, to deliver up the fugitives when demanded by Tetys, occasioned a war betweer these two neighbouring states: the Crotoniats, under the command of the Pythagorean Milo, defeated the once-powerful but effeminated [|] Sybarites, and destroyed their city. This success, however, entailed the ruin of the Pythagoreans. In the division of the spoil a dispute arose from among the popular party, led on by Cylon, who had, it is said, on account of the impurity of his morals, been refused admission into Pythagorean society. The discontented attacked the Pythagoreans who were assembled in the house of Milo, where the greater number were slain. (Ritter 1836: 344-345)
A story familiar enough, with unfamiliar details. That the pythagoreans represented "an almost perfect form of aristocracy", meaning a society actually ruled by the best, I've met before, though cannot point where. Cylon is reported in some places to have accused the pythagoreans of tyranny, whereas here it turns out that it was about the spoils of war.
The causes which led the writers of later times, and even of a very early date, to attribute to the Pythagorean school a wider sphere of influence than it actually possessed, were mainly three: a desire on the part of Pythagoreans to accumulate honours upon their sect; the historical confusion by which those who took a part in the Pythagorean orgies were mistaken for professors of its philosophy; and lastly, the indifference with which the terms Italic and Pythagorean were used to indicate the same system of philosophy. The zeal which burst out shortly before the birth of Christ for the mysterious and wonder-working in philosophy, which was usually designated as Pythagorean, gave rise to a multitude of compositions which were falsely put forward under the names of earlier philosophers of that school. (Ritter 1836: 346)
The flairing up of "wonder-working in philosophy" and a wonder-working Jewish prophet turning out immediately after I find most curious.
Modern criticism has clearly [|] shewn that the works attributed to Timæus and Archytas are spurious; and that the treatise on the nature of the All, which has been assigned to Ocellus Lucanus, cannot even have been written by a Pythagorean. Similarly, also, the many fragments pretendedly of Archytas, as also those which are usually given to Brontinus Euryphemus, and other ancient Pythagoreans, are manifestly spurious. Furthermore, it can be satisfactorily shewn that Alcmæon the Crotoniat physician, the contemporary of Pythagoras, many of whose opinions are yet extant, has been erroneously classed among the Pythagoreans; and also that Hippasus, Ecphantus, Empedocles, and Eudoxus, do not belong to that series of philosophical development which we designate by the name of the Pythagorean school. (Ritter 1836: 346-347)
Still interested in reading them, if I can (meaning, if they have been translated into English, which is somewhat dubious).
There would be much less difficulty in proving this assertion, did we still possess the work of Aristotle against the Pythagoreans and Archytas; however, the slightest comparison of the pretended works and fragments of Pythagoreans with the information we may derive as to the Pythagorean doctrines from the scattered notices of Aristotle, leaves no room to hesitate what decision our judgment must come to on this point. (Ritter 1836: 347)
Here's a worthy task for whoever invents or has free use of a time machine: go back and cop a copy of Πρός τούς Πυθαγορείους α'.
The present place admits not of critical discussions. On this point my History of the Pythagorean Philosophy may be consulted. (Ritter 1836: 347, fn1)
I wish I could. This is Ritter's Geschichte de Pythagoreischen Philosophie (1826) [Google Books].
It is only from the time of Socrates that we first derive any account of the Pythagoreans possessing the slightest title to the certainty of history. This information is, however, limited to four or five names - Philolaus, Lysis, Clinias, Eurytus, [|] Archytas; of these, three are mentioned by Aristotle - Philolaus, Erytus, and Archytas; the first and the last lived at Thebes, and the latter of the two was the tecaher of Epamonidas: of Clinias all that is told is not so well warranted, notwithstanding its high degree of probability. As to the age in which these individuals respectively lived, thus much only can be affirmed with certainty, that Philolaus was the teacher at Thebes of Simmias and Cebes, before they came to Socrates at Athens: that, somewhat later, Lysis was the instructor of Epamonidas; and somewhat later still, Archytas was the contemporary of the younger Dionysius and of Plato. The dates of the others are consequently determined; for they are all more or less connected together. There is yet another statement, apparently very credible to a certain point, which tells that Philolaus, Clinias, and Eurytus, were the disciples of one Aresas, a teacher in Italy of the Pythagorean philosophy. (Ritter 1836: 347-348)
A straigh-forward listing, much less populated than the Wikipedia category of Pythagoreans, which indiscriminately jumbles these together with various neopythagoreans.
There is much unquestionably that is incorrect mixed up with this account (Böckh's Phil. 13); but it stands distinctly apart from the other fabulous narratives of the succession of the Pythagorean school; on which account it will deserve some credit. Plutarch, de Gen. Soc., means possibly Aresas, when he talks of the Pythagorean Arkesos. (Ritter 1836: 348, fn4)
A lovely tidbit. This is Plutarch's De genio Socratis, available in English in Vol. 7 (of 15) of his Moralia (here).
The general description portrays thes Pythagoreans as men, the chief aim of whose action and [|] thoughts was to attain to a perfect blamelessness of life. (Ritter 1836: 349-350)
Well put. They evidently did not arouse jealousy in anyone, as the Golden Verses advise.
Archytas, the most distinguished citizen, and a native of Tarentum, who six or seven times discharged the responsible office fo general, and never experienced either check or defeat, and deservedly enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his fellow-townsmen, was eminently distinguished for his self-command and purity of conduct; and as uniting with a rare and prudent knowledge of mankind, such a child-like feeling of universal love and such simpleness of manners, that he lived with the inmates of his house a real father of a family; and, amid all his public avocations, still found leisure to devote to the most important discoveries in science, and to the composition of many works of a very diversified character. His discoveries were exclusively in the mathematical and kindred sciences. (Ritter 1836: 350)
One can just about imagine how such a man could inspire Plato to take up pythagoreanism.
Among the later Pythagoreans there are also mentioned Xenophilus of the Thracian Chalcis, Echecrates, Diocles, and Polymnastus, the common birth-place of which three was the little town of Phlius: with these it has been asserted that Aristoxenus, the disciple of Aristotle, was acquainted. (Ritter 1836: 352)
Of these, only Polymnastus lacks a Wikipedia page, and all of them, along with Phanto, are mentioned as the pupils of Philolaus on his page.
From these philosophical Pythagoreans we shall no doubt be justified in distinguishing certain other Pythagoreans, who brought into Greece manifold superstitious practices and pretended magical powers. It is true, the testimonies to this perversion of the Pythagorean orgies - for such it is necessary to consider the most, if not the whole of such practices - are not very ancient, the earliest belonging to the time of Cicero. But when we reflect, that it was at this period that superstition first began openly to shew itself, and that the secret customs and associations of the Pythagoreans presented a fitting stock for the engrafting of the grossest superstitions; that there [|] was, moreover, a natural germ of superstition in their mystical rites; and that, lastly, traces of deep corruption were very early discovered in this school, - we cannot well hesitate to admit that, even in the olden times, there were some, among those usually reckoned as Pythagoreans, who sought by such fraudulent artifices to make a profit of the popular superstition. (Ritter 1836: 352-353)
The footnote specifies on "the Pythagorean orgies" that "In earlier times it was usual to call them Orphic mysteries" (ibid, 352, fn5). The smelly beggars who roamed around calling themselves pythagoreans were probably the ones Ritter is describing here as "religious tricksters" (ibid, 353).
In this respect the Pythagoreans must not be likened to the Ionians, but to the Eleatæ, by whom we shall presently see a single primary view carried out on its different aspects. This unity of opinion among the Pythagoreans on all important points was strongly promoted by the close bonds of their fraternity: indeed it is not improbable that the stories of the expulsion of certain members on account of their doctrines were so far founded on truth, that the Pythagoreans were scrupulous to preserve the purity of their doctrine; and to this there is an evident allusion in the distinction so expressly drawn between the genuine Pythagorean and the spurious expositions of their theory of numbers. (Ritter 1836: 354)
On "the spurious expositions of their theory of numbers" he elaborates: "Hereto belongs the doctrine of Hippasus: vide Jambl. in Nicom. p. 11." (ibid, 354, fn1) - implying that Hippasus put forth a forgery.
[...] this, however, manifestly does not exclude the possibility of the existence of different grades of perfection, and diversified points of view. This seems to be strongly confirmed by the fact, that Aristotle no where allows an individual philosopher to stand prominently forward out of the general body of the Pythagorean sect. Generally speaking, it would appear that the acquaintance possessed by the ancients with this doctrinal system was confined to the writings of Philolaus and Archytas. Even of the philosophical doctrines of Philolaus little has been expressly quoted; and of all the [|] Pythagoreans, he alone presents himself before us in any degree of distinct personality. On this account, it is perfectly impossible to trace historically the divers tendencies and advances of the Pythagorean philosophy. (Ritter 1836: 356-357)
Pythagoreans are legion.
Of course, we do not deny, that there is much in the accounts given by Aristotle of the Pythagorean doctrine which needs confirmation. On the contrary, we are disposed to think that the wish to find points of resemblance between the Pythagorean and Platonic systems had led Aristotle to many distorted views of the former. When we compare his extracts together, it is impossible not to perceive that he was, to a certain degree, undecided as to the meaning of the Pythagorean doctrine. As he has often misinterpreted the Platonic, so too he has the Pythagorean, and, generally, every doctrine in which there was aught of the mystical in the exposition, and thereby required greater quickness of fancy than Aristotle possessed. (Ritter 1836: 356)
Here Aristotle sounds like the "dialectical materialist" of his day, unable to even grasp what the "idealists" are going on about.
If, in our exposition of these doctrines, we confine ourselves to Aristotle and the more ancient authorities, and the fragments of Pythagorean writings still extant, and only with extreme caution make any use of the statements transmitted through later channels, this will occasion no surprise to those who are in any degree acquainted with these later traditions. (Ritter 1836: 358)
Thus begins Chapter II, "Doctrines of the pythagoreans". I'm pleasantly surprised to find such a use of the term "channels". By the time period, they signify more closely, yet still metaphorically, the channels of waterways. I have to admit, here, that overall, the English language of this translation, from 1838, is surprisingly modern - much more so than Thomas Taylor's translation of the Life of Pythagoras two decades earlier. Only very seldomly does the language of this book remind its age.
Besides their usual inaccuracy and want of precision, all the writers upon the Pythagorean philosophy, subsequent to the birth of the Christ, exhibit a strange confusion of the most opposite views; arising in part from their having been deceived by supposititious works, and in part from their confounding with the old and genuine the doctrines of the more modern Pythagoreans, which, however, had nothing in common with the ancient Pythagorism beyond the mere outward form. (Ritter 1836: 358)
That's one way to discriminate between early pythagoreans and neopythagoreans.
It is undoubtedly no easy matter to separate, in these later traditions, what belongs to the old system, and what to the new; but another, perhaps greater difficulty, lies in the symbolical mode of indication employed by the Pythagoreans, and which is capable of being taken in a variety of ways, in consequence of the very imperfect correspondence of the symbol and the [|] object it stood for. We ever find that they employed the same symbol in different senses; and it is far from easy to determine the particular sense they gave it in easy formula respectively. (Ritter 1836: 358-359)
Before long I have to compile a list of translations for the various symbols, so that I may add various interpretations to respective symbols. This method has worked wonders for the Golden Verses, parts of which I've recognized in Diogenes Laertios and elsewhere, and to which I shall add other versions by and by (one I was unaware of cropped up in Google Books). I have a feeling that if I don't compile the symbols similarly in due time, I shall miss out on much in these treatises I'm intending to read.
Even the formula in which they advanced their leading position. "The number is the essence (αύσία) or the first principle (άρχή) of all things," can only be taken symbolically. And the question to be determined is, what did they understand by number as the principle of things. This much, at all events, is clear, that in this doctrine they started from the mathematical, consequnetly from the form, not from the matter of the sensible. (Ritter 1836: 359)
This, for example, is what I usually group under the three-word formula, "All is number". What is eminently clear, of course, is that designating number as the arche of being, the pythagoreans proceed from a sort of "idealist" position summarized by Charles Peirce in a quip I enjoy quoting: "Arithmetic, the law of number, was before anything to be numbered or any mind to number had been created" (W 1: 169).
Many are the instances, besides this of the Pythagoreans, where a predilection for the mathematical has led to an attempt to reduce all things to number and measure, or where a deep-seated tendency of man's nature has suspected it could discover some deep mystery in figures and numbers; and in all these instances alike the theorist, in order to establish his hypothesis, has had recourse [|] to manifold fantastical and empty analogies. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the remark of Aristotle, that the Pythagoreans, whenever, in the many points of resemblance they adduce in confirmation of their system, some cases did not exactly tally, did not scruple to draw upon fancy for the deficiencies of reality. (Ritter 1836: 359-360)
All these instances I hope to become aware of. From what little I've seen, it is indeed the case that the interpretations are various. But I hold out that a semiotician, especially (at least one foot) in the Peircean tradition, is preeminently predisposed to, if not satisfactorily solving, at least shedding new light to the confusion of pythagorean symbols.
Their mode of proceeding was mainly this: they first endeavoured to give probability to the dogma, "all is number," by calling attention to the many phenomena whose qualities are dependent on numerical relations, and then sought to accumulate instances by the aid of the most arbitrary assumptions. Nevertheless, it would not seem that the philosophical element in their doctrine was originally the result of observation of the constant recurrence in nature of certain numerical relations. (Ritter 1836: 360)
This is where, at least since the renaissance, I expect the name of Fibonacci to come up frequently.
Now, we find yet many other and similar formularies expressive of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers; and it is above measure necessary to notice, that in some numbers, in others the number, or the elements of number, are made to be [|] the principles of things. That these several expressions are not identical or tantamount, is of itself evident; and it becomes us now to enter upon a particular explanation of the proper sense of each. (Ritter 1836: 360-361)
These are, naturally, the three interpretations of "All is number" that Aristotle gives (cf. Rosen 2006: 2733).
We begin with the expression: Number is the principle of things. In the fragments of Philolaus, mentions constantly occurs of the essence of number. That this should be conceived as one and the same with number itself is natural. But in the Pythagorean doctrine, number comprises within itself two species - odd and even: it is therefore the unity of these two contraries; it is the odd and the even. Now, the Pythagoreans said also that one, or the unit, is the odd and the even; and thus we arrive at this result, that one, or the unit, is the essence of number, or number absolutely. As [|] such, it is also the ground of all numbers, and is therefore named the first one, of whose origin nothing further can be said. In this respect the Pythagorean theory of numbers is merely an expression for "all is from the original one" - from one being, to which they also gave the name of God; for, in the words of Philolaus, "God embraces and actuates all, and is but one." Nothing essential is there in that the Pythagoreans denominated the primary one as number preeminently; but it did undeniably afford a connecting point whereon much that was essential attached itself. (Ritter 1836: 361-361)
Thus far, this makes a surprising measure of sense. 1 is simultaneously odd and even, in comprises all, because it can do all - adding 1 can make an even number odd and an odd number even. Now, "the unity of these two contraries" is a neat little callback to harmony - much like man is a unity/harmony of soul and body, god would be unity/harmony of odd and even, finite and infinite, etc. That 1 should be "the ground of all numbers" may explain the Peircean/Kantian firstness - the "ground" in a philosophical sense. That 1 = monad = God is already familiar enough. It makes sense that everything else, every other number, would thus emanate from 1. So, the number is 1.
But in this passage άριθμός also is put for ἒν, as the ground or principle of the contrariety of odd and even; so that from this alone it results, that with the Pythagoreans the one had a double signification, indicating both the unit which stands for the representative of the odd, and the one, which is the odd and the even. The argument of Aristotle in the latter part is as follows: that of which unity and infinity may be predicated, is in its essence nothing else than one and infinite; now unity and infinity may be predicated of all, therefore all is nothing else than one and infinite. But farther: one and infinite, or odd and even, is number in general; consequently all is number. (Ritter 1836: 361, fn2)
Unity and infinity = one and infinite. What a world.
The same thought, which we have here supposed to form the basis of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, occurs again, though differently expressed in other formulæ. Thus Philolaus is represented [|] as saying, Number is the eternal, self-originating bond of the eternal continuance of mundane things. Another form of this doctrine, which regarded ten as the essence of number, displays an equally active endeavour to exhibit the same thought. For, inasmuch as the unit was regarded by the Pythagoreans as the ground of multiplicity, but all numbers were, according to the decenary scale, based upon the decade, the decade and the unit consequently were held by them to be symbols of the ground of all things. Of the decade, therefore, they taught that it embraces every number, comprising within itself the nature of all, of the even and the odd, of the moved and the unmoved, of the good and the evil: that the work and the essence of number must be seen in the energy which is contained in the decade; for it is great, perfecting all, working all, the principle and the director of all life, divine, heavenly, or human. They likewise expressed the essence of number by the tetractys, or quadrate, which, according to them, is the root of the eternally flowing nature: what they understood by the grand tetractys, whether the sum of the first four numbers, i.e. ten, or the sum of the first four odd and [|] of the first four even, i.e. thirty-six, is unimportant; for the essential is not the symbol, but what the symbol represented. (Ritter 1836: 362-364)
Here it gets a bit more mystical. That "Number is the eternal, self-originating bond of the eternal continuance of mundane things" sounds like emanation, once again. I'll be very keen to see, if this exact wording, due to its age, was not appropriated by Thoreau's transcendentalists. Peirce, if I recall correcly, had quipped over the self-begottenness of God. Another thing that stands out is "the ground of multiplicity", which points to the difficulties involved in the term "ground" in Peircean/Kantian philosophy. That both 1 and 10 should be "the ground of all things" is likewise difficult but may go to explain why Peirce found exactly 10 classes of signs. Now, odd/even, moved/unmoved, good/evil sounds like the stuff of pythagorean tables, which I expect to conform to this sort of harmony between (binary) opposites throughout.
[A paragraph spanning 3 pages should merit just as many paragraphs.] On a more mystic note, I'm quite interested in how one would distinguish "divine, heavenly, or human". The closest parallel would of course be gods, men, and creatures like Pythagoras, in which case Pythagoras would be "heavenly", whatever that means. Actually, this would be the ideal place to discuss the most sacret secret of the pythagoreans, i.e. that "there are three species of intellectual creatures, God and man, and an intermediate, to which class Pythagoras belonged" (Ritter 1838: 343, fn1).
Ritter says there's nothing philosophical about this. Did he not read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics? Surely he must have, but perhaps did not consider that Aristotle - bless his soul - distinguishes creatures who have an intellect and creatures who use their intellect. That's pretty much his distinction between animals and men. Notice, animals are not included in this scheme here, but it is easy enough to generalize upon the fragments Taylor gives: animals have reason, humans use reason, and gods embody reason. The last verb I've had to pull out of the air, but that would complete the mystic analogy. The implication being that creatures like Pythagoras, who use their intellect/reason are "heavenly" (but not yet divine; whereas the common lot of "man", who merely possess but does not use reason, is little better than animal creatures).
Here I have to add, breaking triadism, that 36 is new to me. The logic of 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8 = 36 makes mathematical sense (that's the sum, yeah), but why there should be four of both first odd and even numbers, I have no fucking clue.
But in the essence of number, or in the first original one, all other numbers, and consequently the elements of numbers, and the elements of the whole world, and all nature, are contained. The elements of number are the even and the odd: on this account, the first one is the even-odd, which the Pythagoreans, in their occasionally strained mode of symbolising, attempted to prove thus; that one being added to the even makes odd, and to the odd even. (Ritter 1836: 364)
Sad to see the third interpretation afforded so little spcae. Even more so, that it says little new - "The elements of number are the even and the odd" is fairly disappointing. There is a curious footnote: "Arist. a. Theon. Smyrn. i. 5. The Pythagoreans, however, took the expression even-odd and odd-even in yet another sense: vid. Nicom. Inst. Arithm. i. 9, 10." (ibid, 364, fn1) - Unlike the dialogues of Plato, such references are difficult to decipher. I'll leave them be for the moment.
The primary elements of nature, or the universe, were arranged by some of the Pythagoreans in a table of opposite notions, which, as given by Aristotle, stands as follows:The limit and the limitless,We must not, however, imagine that all the simple elements which enter into the composition of things were supposed by the Pythagoreans to be contained in this table; for it is manifest that its limit has been determined by a wholly external cause - the opinion that ten is the perfect number, such being the number of the contrarieties it contains. (Ritter 1836: 364-365)
The odd and the even,
The one and the many,
The right and the left,
The male and the female,
The quiescent and the moving,
[|] The right line and the curve,
Light and darkness,
Good and evil,
The square and the oblong.
Ah, the famous table of contraries. Ritter goes on about how the left side is more perfect than the left, and muses about the odd placement of the "unity". The way I see it, the harmony between these could make the "perfect", rather than the perfect being on the left. Thus, the 1 or monad is simultaneously "The odd and the even", just like "marriage" ("5") is simultaneously "The male and the female". Who, for example, would say that God is only Good, rather than the harmony of "Good and evil"?
Now, bearing this in mind, we cannot well entertain a doubt that a different value must belong to the respective members of each contrariety; for since among the derivative and contrary grounds of things there is one having the same name with the first and absolute ground, it is impossible not to regard it as, in some degree, more akin to the divine and more perfect than the other and opposite term of the contrariety: and so, in fact, we find that the Pythagoreans, throughout the entire series of contraries, regarded the first member as better and more perfect, but the second as less worthy and less perfect; on which account the ancients expressly named the first line the line of the good, the other that of the bad. (Ritter 1836: 366)
Exactly my point: let's say that the left side is "more perfect" than the right side of the table. What is the bar to saying that the truly perfect is the commixture, or "harmony" of the left and the right side?
But the most remarkable point in the table is, that among the mundane contraries we find that which the Pythagoreans held to be the ground of all contraries - the one, namely - which in the table is opposed to multiplicity, as if not contained therein. (Ritter 1836: 365)
Exactly my point: what if the whole table follows the logic of unity (left) and multiplicity (right) give totality? - Totality, the unnameable, is merely excluded - because of being unnameable...
At the bottom of [|] the arrangement of the table there lay an obscure notion that the second line is indicative merely of some negation; for which reason Aristotle terms the grounds expressed by it the privative. Viewed in this light, the table of contraries is only a varied expression for the thought, that all in the world consists of perfect and imperfect. (Ritter 1836: 366-367)
A pretty good approximation of what I'm trying to say, it is the union of unity and multiplicity that gives totality. Let's say, following the outdated misogynistic logic of the scheme, that the male is a perfect unity and the female is the imperfect multiplicity - the outcome of their union is a new totality - a new person, a child embodying the qualities of both parents. In this odd sense, the male is a unity because a single male reproductive cell will enter the egg cell, but twins or triplets may ensue from the multiplicity of the female body.
It is further to be observed that, by this table, the Pythagoreans were far from affirming that the world was made up of twenty elements; on the contrary, all the contrarieties contained in the table are mere variations of one and the same contrariety. This was both maintained by the ancients in express terms, and is clear from the constant interchange of the limit and the limitless especially, and also of the one with the odd and even number; as is likewise the case with all the contrarieties which have, in any degree, been familiarised to us. Thus, with them, the one is also the limit and odd number, the quiescent, the light, and the good; and its contrary the respective contraries. That this indifferent use and equivalence of so many and different terms must necessarily lead to perplexity and confusion, is manifest, when we look at the series of contrarieties: we must, however, remember, that even in this table the general symbolical character of the Pythagorean mode of exposition was true to itself. (Ritter 1836: 367)
Likewise - I'm not sure why Ritter would think that there would be 20 elements because there are 10 binary oppositions. Wouldn't there be, given their commixtures/harmonies, like 30? Even then, it feels fairly arbitrary - as if the 10 oppositions were given merely by way of illustration, the more important aspect being their commixture. In my arbitrary opinion, one could propose as many oppositions as one wishes, 10 being merely the suitable limit.
Also, I think it's very short-sighted of Ritter to identify the left side of the table with perfection/God - especially because he himself just outlined how 1 is a commixture of odd and even, capable of emanating both. If the analogy between male and female doesn't make much sense to most people - because gender politics is confusing and recognizing females in male bodies and males in female bodies as the "perfect" beings among us makes no fucking sense to most people - let's take it astronomically: the planets are not either quiescent or moving, they are both quiescent (if you are standing on one) and moving (when looked upon from a stationary cosmic position). That's how I see it - the keyword here being the outdated term commixture, partaking of both natures (unity and multiplicity). I think Ritter is committing what is commonly called a "categorical mistake" - he is confusing unity for totality; a dot or jot of paint does not a painting make.
The Pythagoreans would seem, however, to have had some deeper import in assigning to the one - notwithstanding that they regarded it as the principle of all numbers and of all things - to the even-odd - a place among the secondary principles or elements of things. For they wished perhaps to intimate thereby that the ground and principle of all things enters itself into the contrariety of phenomena, and is in no respect different from that out of which the world, in its multiplicity, is formed; but that the true essence and perfection of things have their persistency in it. (Ritter 1836: 368)
Exactly what I was harping on about.
This is implied in the manner in which Aristotle says, without limitation, that number or the one is the ground and also the essence of things: and is further confirmed by the words of Philolaus, when treating of number as the essence of things. "The essence of things, which is eternal, and nature in and by itself, admits of divine, but not of human cognition, unless so far as it would be impossible for any one of the things that are, which are imperfectly known by us, to be so known, unless the essence were contained in the things of which the world consists - the limiting and the unlimited." (Ritter 1836: 368)
"Not unto all should all be made known" may mean that humankind may be unable to know the essence of things.
Something similar is also said of the decade and of the nature of number by the same Philolaus, to the effect that without it nothing can be known; but that it is the decade which adjusts all things to the soul, and renders them knowable and congenial; so that [|] "the nature and energy of number may be traced not only in divine and demonish things, but even in human works and words every where, and in all works of art, and in music." (Ritter 1836: 368-369)
(Divine) Gods, humans, and (demonish) creatures like Pythagoras.
These ideas, so far as they here concern us, are compendiously advanced by Cicero, in a form more approaching to modern views, in the position: God with the Pythagoreans is the soul which is diffused through [|] and governing in all things, and from which our souls derive their origin. (Ritter 1836: 369-370)
"But grieve not thou, nor at thy fate repine; Since all men own an origin divine;" (Golden Verses).
But they likewise posited a principle of imperfection in the limitless, or infinite, which Philolaus calls also the irrational and unintelligent, and says of it, that falsehood and envy reside therein. (Ritter 1836: 370)
Thus, "Avoid anything which can give rise to envy." in the Golden Verses may have a deeper, symbolic meaning.
The good, therefore, is not from the first, but, like the animal or the plant, comes into being subsequently from the seed; and how else could this be effected than by the one itself entering into the cosmopœia, and by the essence of number becoming the ground of numbers? (Ritter 1836: 372)
New term for me.
They observed, that whatever can be known must be limited, having beginning, middle, and end: now the beginning and the end are naturally the limiting, i.e. the limits, but the middle the unlimited; which they seem also to have inferred from this, that the middle between the limits may be divided ad infinitum. (Ritter 1836: 374)
Huh. Made me realize that Unity and Totality are limited, and Plurality is unlimited.
In order to form a right apprehension of this doctrine, we must endeavour to determine more precisely the Pythagorean notions of the limiting and the limited. When the limit is considered as the beginning and the end, it is naturally posited as a plurality; consequently Philolaus speaks of limiting things. (Ritter 1836: 374)
Or is it the reverse? The beginning and the end are plural (there are two of them), whereas the middle is an undifferentiated mass?
Now, in the corporeal, these are ultimately spacious points, called by the Pythagoreans units, or monads. Aristotle says - not, it is true, expressly naming the Pythagoreans, but plainly indicating them by the mention of Plato and the Platonists immediately afterwards: "To some, indeed, the limits of body, such as, the surface, the [|] line, the point, the monad, seem to be realities, indeed more so than the body and the solid." This is still more circumstantially shewn by others. The Pythagoreans held numbers to be the principle of things, because to them the primary and the incomposite appeared to be the principle: now the primary of body is surfaces, the primary of a surface lines, of the line points, which they called units or monads, which, perfectly incomposite, have nothing antecedent or simpler; but as units are numbers, numbers must necessarily be the principia of things. We see, then, that this doctrine of numbers tends to the explanation of corporeity by incorporeal principles, for spacial points are not bodies; and all that has been said on this point confirms, what indeed is implied by the very term limit, that the Pythagoreans resolved corporeal existence into points, which are the ultimate limits of [|] body. The limiting is general was, to their minds, in reference to things corporeal, nothing but a multitude of points, which are somehow held together in space; and the proposition, All things consists of the existence numbers, is, in other words, "All things are composed of points, or spacial units, which taken together constitute a number." (Ritter 1836: 374-376)
This is that "determination of extension" (Rittel 1838: 329, above). Every time this Platonic forms stuff comes up, I can't help but think that the pythagoreans basically saw this universe as we see a video game - composed of polygons.
These propositions contain a train of inferences made by Aristotle in the Pythagorean spirit; but they start from the position of the Pythagoreans, that heaven (the world) is composed of numbers; and this is the only one in all the chain of positions which belongs directly to the Pythagoreans: then he infers from it, that the number of the Pythagoreans is not abstract, which most certainly the Pythagoreans never said; since the distinction between non-abstract or mathematical numbers and abstract or ideal numbers had not been made in their time: 2. that they said, that sensible beings consisted of numbers; which again they could not have said, since the distinction between αίσθητὀν and νοητὀν had not yet found any express terminology [...] (Ritter 1836: 376, fn1)
This gives off the vibe that the pythagorean philosophy might be so primitive that it is simply incomprehensible.
Having thus determined the notion of the limiting, there will be no difficulty in ascertaining what we are to understand by its contrary - the notion of the unlimited. If the former indicates the extremes, the latter must signify the mean between the limits - the intermediate space. On this account the notion of the interval has, from the earliest times, played an important part in their system, not merely in reference to their musical theory, but likewise for the geometrical construction of the relation of space. According to this theory, they posited certain intervals (διαστήματα, [|] intervalla), possessing different relations, and they derived therefrom the concords of various tones; a doctrine which is an ancient as the scientific study of music, so far as we are acquainted with it. This notion of intervals was employed by them in order to facilitate their conception of space as filled with their monads, or unitary numbers: for the units in themselves are strictly geometrical points, therefore incorporeal; and from the conjunction of two such points a body cannot be produced, nor even a line; for from the composition of the unextended, extension cannot possibly result. The necessity, therefore, of the intervention of this second principle for the production of body extended in three dimensions, is manifest. For as the units, or points, constitute the beginning and the end or the limits, and the unlimited the middle, it is only by this intervention in the middle of the unlimited, that extension first becomes possible, and geometrical extension of three dimensions by a threefold interval between four points, as Philolaus seems to have been of opinion; since, according to him, the cube consists of three similar intervals. (Ritter 1836: 377-378)
All of this is barely beginning to make sense.
And as the Pythagoreans intended by the second member of each contrariety to indicate the negative in the world, they would appear to have seen a something negative in the unlimited - a void interval. That they admitted a vacuum is well attested by many authorities; and that they looked upon it as one of the principles of things is probable, from the simple fact, that all who have ever adopted a vacuum, in the strict sense, supposed it to be a something primary and original, because nothing extended can be homogeneous with the void. But we need not have recourse to any such analogies, to prove that with them vacuum was a principle of things; for Aristotle says, in express terms, "According to the Pythagoreans, the void first separates the numbers, and determines their nature, as likewise it does the place of things." Here, therefore, it is posited [|] that the separation of numbers, or units, is brought about by vacuum, or, what is the same, that the numbers are first produced by the vacuum. If, therefore, the void is a principle of numbers, and numbers are principles of things, it is clear that the Pythagoreans supposed vacuum to be a principle of things. (Ritter 1836: 381)
The vacuum has not come up before, but neither have I read something so deeply inside their theory of numbers. So much of it escapes me at the moment, I will certainly have to revisit this chapter at a later date.
The Pythagoreans described the origination of the world as a union which came to pass between the opposite principles of the unlimited and the limiting, the even and the odd. But this union was regarded by them as existent from the beginning, since they called their supreme principle the even-odd. This description, therefore, of the origin of the world may well be considered as nothing more than a genetical exposition; in which light it was understood by the ancients, who have transmitted to us a statement that the Pythagoreans taught the world had not really any origin in time, only apparently so to human thought. (Ritter 1836: 285)
The beginnings of time-consciousness.
But at the same time they supposed a continual effort on the part of the so-separated contraries to effect a mutual union. Consequently the limiting one is constantly attracting to and into itself that part of the unlimited which is nearest to itself, and thereby limits it. This effort they called the inhaling of the infinite, or the infinite inspiration, by which the void comes into the world, and thereupon separates things one from another. (Ritter 1836: 386)
Very poetic, this.
Thus, then, the Pythagorean doctrine of two opposite first principles appears to be in congruity with their fundamental doctrine, that all issues from one, and is ruled by one supreme God: for the primary principles are united in the original unity of God - in the odd-even - in the primary number, since the living development of the whole heaven, or world, has been from the beginning. Hence the whole heaven is number, and number the essence of things; and the triad comprises the numbers of the All, since it has within it beginning, middle, end. (Ritter 1836: 388)
These past umpteen pages have gone so far above my head that I'm even unable to discern the triad here.
The slightest consideration of the difficulty of this problem will prevent any great surprise at finding that, in their attempt at its solution, the Pythagoreans had recourse to the most arbitrary assumptions. All these, however, are so far based upon an idea intelligible to all, as that they proceeded from a desire to prove that all the relations of the world were ordered on some harmonical, or, yet more generally, symmetrical principle. The notion of harmony, which with them appears to have comprehended all relations ordered by a determinate law, was connected in a twofold manner with their theory. For instance, they observed, that as the unity of the universe was composed of opposite elements, as indicated in their table of contraries, there must, in consequence, be some suitable bond by which they are held together in order; and this bond is harmony. Hence Philolaus said, "Since the principles of things are neither similar nor congenerous, it is impossible for them to be brought into order except by the intervention of harmony, whatever may have been the manner in which it took place. Like the homogeneous [|] things, indeed, would not have required harmony; but as to the dissimilar and heterogeneous and unsymmetrical, such must necessarily be held together by harmony, if they are to be contained in a world of order." (Ritter 1836: 390-391)
Here "harmony" appears as a cop-out, a simple-minded solution to otherwise insurmountable philosophical difficulties. Footnote: "Harmony and symmetry are often used as identical; Plut. d. Pl. Ph. i. 3" (ibid, 390, fn2).
We must, in the first place, explain the manner in which, according to them, the physical qualities of body were grounded on the mathematical relations. Of colour and tone in particular we are told, that they derived them from the surface: this, however, applies likewise to all other sensible qualities. For instance, having shewn that the unit is the point, the dual the line, the triad the surface, and the tetractys the geometrical body, they next assumed that the pentade is the physical body with its sensible qualities. This is connected with their doctrine of the elements, of which they seem to have been the first to reckon five, on the supposition of their being derived from the five regular bodies. For to these they reduced the figures of the elements, making the cube earth, the pyramid fire, the octaedron air, the icosaedron water, and the dodecaedron the fifth element, which does not appear to have received the name of ether [|] until later times. Here an analogy presented itself between the five senses and the five elements, which the Pythagoreans were very far from neglecting. (Ritter 1836: 394-395)
Is that why the pentagram is connected with health? Because it is connected, in this geometrical symbolism, with the physical body?
Fire they held to be the chief of all elements. In a certain degree they looked upon it as the principle of life in the world. On this account they also assigned to it the most honourable place in the world, i.e., according to their mode of representation, the limit outwards and inwards, consequently the centre and the surface of the mundane sphere. In the centre of the world therefore rests fire, the watch or tower of Zeus (Διὀς φυλαχή, Ζηνὀς πύϲγος), a cube, which, on account of its three equal surfaces, they held to be the most perfect body, therefore also the altar of the universe, which was first formed, before order had as yet pervaded the rest of the world, and so superintended the orderly disposition of the whole. Now, from this central fire proceeds the fire which pervades the entire mundane system, and embraces its utmost boundaries. (Ritter 1836: 395)
Not as misguided as I first thought: "Kuulus Pythagoras kuuendamal aastasajal arwas arwamise teel põhja pääle saavat ning pidas üht jumalikku "kesktuld" kõigi asjade elustajaks" (Bergmann 1879: 80).
Hence, too, with them the fire in the centre and the fire around the world is the quiescent, another principle of the perfect; around which, however, the mundane bodies revolve, which they assumed to be ten, agreeably with their conception of the perfection of that number, viz. the five planets, the sun, the moon, the earth, and the counter-earth, which, as moving bodies, belong to the series of the imperfect. (Ritter 1836: 396)
Thus, the 10 mundane bodies are (1) the central fire, (2) Mercury, (3) Venus, (4) Mars, (5) Jupiter, (6) Saturn, (7) the sun, (8) the moon, (9) Earth, and (1) the counter-earth.
The determination of the respective distances between these bodies is also subject to their predominant musical law, and furnishes the grounds for their famous doctrine of the harmony of the spheres. For the Pythagoreans supposed that the velocities of the heavenly bodies are proportional to their respective distances; and while each one, by its regular motion, emits a tone, there arises out of the collective heavenly motions a harmony of sound, unnoticed, indeed, by us, in consequence of our habitually hearing it from our birth, and of the law of our auditory perception, which depends on the contrast with silence; or perhaps because the harmony of the universe, from the grandeur of its tones, [|] surpasses our faculty of hearing. (Ritter 1836: 396-397)
We cannot hear the harmony of the spheres because we are too accustomed to it, or it is simply inaudible to our ears.
And similarly, their idea of the perfection of light, and of the imperfection of darkness, seems to have been the origin of their division of the world into its right and left side, since the right was the eastern, or side of light, the left the western, or side of darkness. Hence too it is that in their table of contraries we find the contrariety of light and darkness following immediately after that of good and evil. In a similar point of view, they would seem also to have regarded the contrarieties of upper and under, before and behind; for the upper and before they called good, but the lower and behind, evil. (Ritter 1836: 397)
Hmm, in all the presentations of the table I've seen, including Britannica's have evidently reversed the proper order and placed "right", along with light, good, etc. on the left, and "left", along with darkness and evil, etc. on the right. Weird.
Porphyr. in Harm. Ptol. 4. p. 257. The fragment there quoted is, it is true, not free from suspicion, any more than the similar fragment of the Pythagoreans, which the Platonic καἰ αὒται ἀλλήλων ἀδελφαί τινες αί έπιστῆμαι εῖταν, ώς οἰ ἑ Πυθ. φασι καἰ ἠμεῖς (de Rep. vii. 530. said of harmony and music) seems to comment upon or to amplify. (Ritter 1836: 397, fn1)
On the harmony of the spheres surpassing our faculty of hearing: ""We may venture to suppose," I said, "that as the eyes are framed for astronomy so the ears are framed for the movements of harmony; and these are in some sort kindred sciences, as the Pythagoreans affirm and we admit, do we not, Gloucon?"" (p. 189, Shorey's second volume).
The several heavenly bodies they also called worlds in a subordinate sense, and supposed them to be similar to our earth. Of the moon, at least, we are told, that they maintained it was of a terrestial nature, and inhabited; though, indeed, by beings more perfect and more beautiful than those of earth, whom also they exceed in stature in [|] the same proportion as the moon's periodic time is to that of the earth. This opinion of the greater perfection of beings in the moon, and, if the conjecture be well founded, in the other heavenly bodies also, seems to have flowed principally from the inclination of the Pythagoreans to conceive all to be in the greatest possible perfection; against which the undeniable imperfection of earthly things too grossly offended. (Ritter 1836: 397-398)
"That there may be inhabitants in the moon, although no one has ever observed them, must certainly be admitted; but this assertion means only, that we may in the possible progress of experience discover them at some future time" (Kant 1855: 308).
But the imperfection of the world, which results from the necessary law of the opposite principles of the world's constitution, by which the better is evolved from out of the less good, seems, with the Pythagoreans, to have had its principal seat in the earth. Hence arose their opinion - under the moon is disorderly change, but in the other parts of the world perfect order. Agreeably to this opinion Philolaus divided the world into three parts - viz. Olympus, which holds within itself the purity of the elements, i.e. probably the central fire and the fire outwardly embracing the world; Kosmus, or the world in a limited sense, i.e. the perfectly ordered world, which comprises all mundane bodies except the earth; and Uranus, i.e. the part of the universe which belongs to the terrestial [|] sphere. To the circle of the earth belongs, according to the Pythagoreans, the virtue which is still imperfect, yet to be reduced to order; but perfect wisdom to that of Kosmus. In the disorderly changes of the earth they found the reason why so much appears to us to be purely accidental; which could not be, if all were ordered in accordance with perfect harmonical laws. In their consideration of the earth's imperfection they also looked, perhaps, to this, that the central light of fire reaches us mediately only through the sun and the stars; whereas these receive it immediately from the universal mundane fire: as indeed the whole conception branched off in many and diversified directions. (Ritter 1836: 398-399)
Thus the sublunar chaos. This exposition explodes John Grey's thesis that belief in progress has its roots in Christianity; turns out it existed many hundreds of years before Christ.
It is, for instance, reported, that the Pythagoreans attached the upper and the lower in the world to certain notions; and said, e.g., in one part of the world is opinion and opportunity (χαιρός); but a little higher or lower, injustice, determined by certain numbers which belong to these regions of the world. (Ritter 1836: 400)
"Kairos has classically been defined as a concept that focused on "the uniquely timely, the spontaneous, the radically particular." Ancient Pythagoreans thought Kairos to be one of the most fundamental laws of the universe. Kairos was said to piece together the dualistic ways of the entire universe." (Wikipedia: Kairos)
Thus they determined, that of the particular mundane body which holds the second place opinion is the portion, because the number two was with them the symbol of opinion; but opportunity belongs to that body which has the seventh place, because seven indicates opportunity. (Ritter 1836: 400)
Piecemeal, I'll catch them all.
Now, of all the numbers in the decade, two alone had attributed to it a variety of symbols in an unfavourable sense, because it was held to be the principle of the even and the many. Thus, it is not only opinion, which, as opposed to science or certainty, must have been looked upon as something imperfect, but dissension also and despair. As, therefore, in their arrangement of the mundane system, the first body, reckoning from the central fire, was the counter-earth, and earth the second, this must have furnished to the Pythagoreans a complete and convincing proof that imperfection is the exclusive portion of earth. (Ritter 1836: 401)
Likewise, piecemeal, the order of the mundane bodies avail themselves: (1) central fire, (2) counter-earth, (3) Earth, etc. Curious that they started counting after the central fire, otherwise the counter-earth would be the mundane body embodying opinion, discord, imperfection, etc.
It is true Philolaus remarked, that the present world, in its totality, is from eternity and persists eternally, one, governed by one akin to it, most mighty and most high, and that neither without it nor within it is there any more powerful cause to destroy it. (Ritter 1836: 402)
Earth has a benevolent custodian.
Thus must also have been the ground upon which they attributed life, or at least a term of it, to all things. This vitality of things, however, they arranged in degrees. In most of its peculiarities this doctrine has been preserved to us in a fragment of Philolaus, wherein he assumes four such grades of life: 1st, the existence which comes to all creatures - propagation, with their organs; 2d, that of plants, to whom a root, and growth, and the navel as an organ, are ascribed; 3d, the life of animals, to whom sensation, and a soul, and the heart as an organ, belongs; and lastly, that of man, in whom resides reason, and whose organs are the head and brain. All these grades of living development are so ordered, that the higher ones comprise respectively all the properties of the lower. (Ritter 1836: 403)
Pretty much the stuff of the first book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (vt Aristoteles 1996: 16-17). This scheme's possible pythagorean origin would explain - what surprised me, because this is completely ignored in biosemiotics, where the scheme is otherwise fairly popular - why Aristotle, too, distinguished 4 (instead of the regular 3 - vegetative, animal, and human): "This [last] part has two divisions, one rational as obedient to principle, the other as possessing principle and exercising intelligence" (1934: 31-33).
This alone is clear, that Philolaus, and the Pythagoreans generally, composed of numbers, from the unit up to the tetractys the relations of mathematical body, and from the pentad the qualities of the physical body; in like manner, from the following numbers the orders of the higher degrees of vital existence were determined. (Ritter 1836: 404)
If I'm catching the drift, then the order goes: (1) point, (2) line, (3) surface, (4) cube, (5) physical body, (6) all creatures, (7) plants, (8) animals, (9) man. Presumably, then, (10) is God. Turns out I'm wrong: "after the derivation of the physical body from the pentade, vegetable life will fall to the number six, animal life to seven, and human life, such as it exists on the earth, to eight" (ibid, 404). Presumably, then, creatures like Pythagoras would be (9) and God (10).
Now, when we reflect that Philolaus ascribed nothing more than virtue to human life upon earth, but attributed wisdom to the higher existence in Cosmus, - i.e. in the other planets - it becomes manifest that the number nine must have been the symbol for this godlike or demonial life; but that, finally, the number ten denoted the universal life of the world, and the last principle of things, as has been already mentioned. (Ritter 1836: 404)
Pretty much, then. The ordeal with virtue and wisdom requires elaboration.
Now in this method of representing the composition and life of the world, notions occasionally occur which are drawn from the intellectual and especially from the moral life: the physical, on the contrary, so far as it is not grounded in the mere form of phenomena - i.e. in number and figure - is very subordinate, and was wholly neglected by them. Hence the soul appears to have been an especial object of their investigations. That they called it a number, or even a harmony, only proves, that while considering it, they [|] did not lose sight of their general mode of conceiving things, and affords no close determination of what they understood by the soul. But as they could not well fail to refer all the appearances of individual soul-life to the universal ensouling energy of the world, so it is also placed beyond doubt, that all souls were with them an efflux merely of the universal soul. This the later members of the school expressed in the formula: The soul comes into the body from without. But it was perhaps given more accurately thus: The soul is put into the body by the means of number and harmonical relation. (Ritter 1836: 405-406)
Pretty much the standard fare.
Closely connected with their doctrine of the soul was that of demons and heroes. The Pythagoreans used to wonder when any one said that he had seen no demons; so that they must have considered the appearance of demons not an unusual occurrence. Good and evil demons are spoken of in their doctrines: from them come to men health, sickness, and dreams; and many holy customs have reference to them. (Ritter 1836: 407)
Quite keen to find out more about pythagorean demonology.
Now, coupling with these facts the statement of Aristotle, that some of the Pythagoreans called the floating particles in the sunbeam, others that which sets them in motions, souls; and remarking, at the same time, that the souls which float in the air were what the Pythagoreans called heroes and demons, - we must come to the conclusion, that they were of opinion that souls had an existence even without an organical body, even though a merely imperfect dream-life, similar to that of the shades in Hades. Indeed, it would seem that heroes and demons denoted nothing else than souls which had not yet entered into an animal or human body, or had [|] been lately ejected from them. Out of this view would naturally grow the doctrine of metempsychosis, by assuming that the already separated souls could again enter into other bodies, and form with them the befitting harmony. (Ritter 1836: 407-408)
Fluff.
With the metempsychosis the doctrine of retribution after death is closely connected, and naturally precludes the possibility of the destruction of personality. To the evil a residence was assigned to Tartarus, where they are terrified by the thunders: they are excluded from the society of the good, and are held by the Erinnyes in indissoluble chains. The good, on the contrary, enter the highest place, and there lead a life in common. (Ritter 1836: 409)
As per the last lines of the Golden Verses: "Then if this mortal Body thou forsake, / And thy glad Flight to the pure Æther take, / Among the Gods exalted shalt thou shine, / Immortal, Incorruptible, Divine".
The union of the soul with the body presented another aspect to the Pythagoreans, looking back unto their general doctrines. Thus, as All is subject to a divine regulation of things, so too it was [|] supposed to be a divine visitation whenever a soul entered into a body, to continue within it as in a tomb, in punishment of some crime or other: on which account they held, no more ought to quit the place assigned to him in the world. With this it would also appear to be in connexion, that they spoke of man's inborn destiny, which they recognised as well in the accidental chances of life as in the greater or less capabilities of men. (Ritter 1836: 409-410)
Likewise, from the first third of the Golden Verses: "Of all those Sorrows that attend Mankind. / With Patience bear the Lot to thee assign'd; / Nor think it Chance, nor murmur at the Load; / For know what Man calls Fortune is from God."
We must further add, that it is only the union of the soul with the body, however little this may seem to imply the otherwise perfect life of the soul, that furnishes it with means for its activity; for it is through the body that it receives the organs of its action and cognition - thes enses. This was admitted in their dogma, that the soul loves the body, because otherwise it cannot employ the senses, which nevertheless are indispensable to it for coginition. The soul's existence in the body, therefore, was regarded by them, on the one hand, as an unhappy state; on the other, as necessary, and having, in the universal interdependnecy of all things, its destination for good. (Ritter 1836: 410)
Life is some sort of punishment.
Since, therefore, as already mentioned, the Pythagoreans posited several grades of the soul's existence, of which the lower were comprised in the higher, they must also have assumed a division of its faculties. This was, however, determined by the difference which is observed between men and animals - the distinction of rational and irrational. Hence they divided the soul into the rational and irrational portions; the latter alone resides in animals, but both in man. Besides this twofold partition of the soul, a threefold one is likewise attributed to the Pythagoreans; the accounts of which are, however, so very discrepant, that it is impossible to come to a decided judgment upon its authenticity. Later authors were, for the most part, disposed to ascribe to them the division which is found in Plato, into the concupiscent, irascible, and the rational; but there are good grounds for doubting their correctness. (Ritter 1836: 411)
On doubting the correctness of Plato's division: "See my History of the Pythag. Phil. p. 200 sq." (ibid, 411, fn2)
Another account recommends itself by the peculiarity of its phraseology. The Pythagoreans are there made to call the especially human portion of the soul φρένες, the animal νοῦς and θυμός, the latter being seated in the heart, but νοῦς and φρένες in the brain. This statement is, on the one hand, easily reconcileable with the Philolaic division of the species of [|] life, if we only remark that animals have a brain, but not so perfect as men. But, on the other, there is a want of agreement between it and other expressions of his, which seem to indicate νοῦς as the peculiar property of man; so that if we are to receive it, we must at least suppose that the phraseology of the school was on this point far from constant and identical. (Ritter 1836: 411-412)
The exact thing I'm most interested in, is most shrouded in uncertainty.
They are said to have called virtue a harmony; which definition, however, requires to be further limited, by shewing in what they supposed the harmony of virtue to consist. It is not improbable that they held it to be the coincidence of the rational and the irrational throughout the whole course of life. For, on the one hand, they employed music both to soothe the passions, and to excite the active energies. On the other, they strove to attain to a consistency and agreement in their whole life, as is expressed in their precept: Man ought to consider both the past and the future with a moral aim. (Ritter 1836: 414)
I take it that controlling passions and energies with music is irrational, and considering both the past and future is rational.
In general - for at present we cannot enter into details - these maxims attest their adherence to that olden sentiment of religious piety which in later times was looked upon as superstitious, and to which, in candour, we must admit, that much that was superstitious did attach itself. Thus the adage, that we become better when we go unto the gods, is put into the mouth of a Pythagorean; and Archytas is representing as having said, that we stand amid intelligences superior to our own - whereby he may [|] probably have alluded to divine inspiration; thus man's whole life is considered as under the guidance of the gods, as a work which by divine destiny we are born to fulfil, and it is from this that the criminality of suicide arises; thus Archytas said, the avenger and the altar are the same, for to both alike does the injured fly for protection. (Ritter 1836: 415-416)
Calls to mind the (anonymous?) quip that there are 1000 malicious demons to our left and as many on our right, whom we do not see.
Most of the Pythagorean rules of life are of an ascetic nature; they insisted upon moderation both in desires and affections, and their own command over anger is especially celebrated; upon the observance of faith, and on love and friendship, the models of which, Damon and Pythias, are numbered among the Pythagoreans; and, lastly, on enduring of hunger and thirst, fatigue, and every species of hardship; so that it was a precept with them, for the sufferer not to lessen, but rather to add to his burden. In all this we at once recognise the Dorian character, though softened in some respect by philosophy. (Ritter 1836: 416)
Stuff familiar from Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras.
When we review their system as a whole, we cannot fail to perceive that all is regarded by them in a moral light. The orcder of the universe is to them a harmonical development of the first principle of all things, not to outward beauty, but to virtue and to wisdom, on earth and in the Cosmus respectively. (Ritter 1836: 417)
The triad I am familiar with, in its proper order, no less.
It cannot be denied that the Pythagoreans were led away by the wildest imaginations. For such fancies their whole society had evidently a strong inclination; this is perceptible not only in their religious superstitions and the numerical symbolism connected with them, but also in their philosophemes. In the latter, we are told by Aristotle, they sought to mould the whole world to their own conception of it. But in an age earnestly occupied with science, such plays of the fancy result only from a profound sense of a scientific want. This even Aristotle intimates, when he says, that the principles of the Pythagoreans were calculated to raise the inquirer above the merely sensible and physical into the highest domains of science. (Ritter 1836: 418)
Hence the utopians and various revolutionaries harkening back to the pythagorean school, as well as his lasting and multifarious imprint in the history and philosophy of science.
Yet they were the first, we are told by Aristotle, who attempted to determine the essence of things, and to give definitions of terms; but their method was very unskilful. This was a natural consequence of their symbolical style. The only means they had for a definition was the number, i.e. a relation of units, in which lay the essence of things; which, however, was referred back to the first unit, the living principle of the number. This they held to be the soul of the world, which evolves multiplicity out of itself, and thereby becomes the ground of every harmonical relation; following therein a view quite conformable to the Greek habit of thought, which, attaching itself naturally to their ethical labours, exhibited the whole life of the world from a moral point of view. (Ritter 1836: 420)
Curiously, even a part of their symbolism has returned to philosophy - in the form of Charles Peirce's semiotic phenomenology with its Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
Nevertheless it is worthy of remark, that philosophy, in every direction, received its first impulsion from Ionian minds; for as Pythagoras was educated in an Ionian city, so also Xenophanes was an Ionian; although it was in a stranger land that both alike found the proper sphere of their intellectual activity. (Ritter 1836: 423)
No one is a prophet in their own land.
Whence Xenophanes derived his opinions and doctrines is a much-debated question. Some have given to him a master in one Boton, an Athenian, an otherwise totally unknown personage: others have referred his system to Pythagoras as its source, notwithstanding that he ridicules the opinions of this philosopher: others, again, have pretended to recognise a certain oriental character in his ideas, but without sufficient reason; for, on the one hand, the cast of his mind is essentially Grecian, and, on the other, he rejected every fantastical and polytheistic representation of the Deity, from which, however, no Asiatic religion or doctrine was free. (Ritter 1836: 427)
Hold up, are we not allowed to ridicule our teachers?
Now, while these arguments are apparently directed against the Ionian philosophy, others, on the contrary, have evidently reference to Pythagorean ideas. He [Xenophanes] taught, for instance, that God can neither be limited nor unlimited, for the non-being alone can be infinite, as having neither beginning, middle, nor end; and it is only in multiplicity that one thing can be limited by another. Connected herewith is also his tenet, that God is without parts, but is throughout alike; for if he had parts, then would some be ruled by others, and the others rule; but this is impossible, for the very notion of God implies his perfect and thorough sovereignty. In these arguments the pervading coherence and connexity of all existence is taken for granted. (Ritter 1836: 433)
Indeed, fairly familiar themes.
Closely connected with these negative positions with respect to the Deity, is his positive doctrine of the divine nature. For, from the position, that God is without parts, Xenophanes further argued that he must be throughout alike; and referring this to his intellectual being, he maintained that he [|] is throughout reason and intelligence; and then connecting God's power with his reason, he says of the omnipotent:Without trouble he ruleth the All by reason and insight.[...] Simpl. ibid.ἀλλ' ἀπάνευθε πόνοιο νόου φρενἰ πάντα κραδαίνει.I connectd the words differently from Brandis, without, however, deciding who is right; only I cannot attribute to Xenophanes the Pythagorean distinction between φρἠν and νοῡς, which he is inclined to do. Xenophanes does no where distinguish between αῐσθησις and νοῡς. After Diog. L. ix. 19. ἒφη δἐ καἰ τἀ πολλἀ ῆττω τοῡ εῑναι, Brandis is even disposed to attribute to him the division of the soul into three parts. But I take this passage very differently, and differently too from Bayle (Xen. not. D): it amounts to the same as the verses above: The multiplicity of things is subjected to the reason. Cf. Cousin, p. 83. (Ritter 1836: 433-434)
Hmm. I'm not yet read to dip into the Greek originals, and may never become so, but I'll record this as a curious note on a subject I'm most interested in.
However, we are informed by a statement by no means improbabl, that he [Parmenides] was less a disciple of Xenophanes than of Ameinias and Diochætes, of whom the latter is styled a Pythagorean: [...] Erroneously, I suppose, as is the case generally with the so constant employment of this name: it might be conjectured that Diochætes and Ameinias were disciples of Xenophanes. The connexion of the Eleatic with [|] the Pythagorean school has been ofttimes maintained: Strabo, vi. init. Diog. L. i. 15. Procl. in Parm. i. 5. ed. Cous., after Callimachus: there are, too, traces of such a connexion in its doctrines, but only in some few points; e.g. Diog. L. viii. 14, compared with ix. 23: the general character of the two is widely different. (Ritter 1836: 445-446)
An interesting connection, nevertheless
The family from which he [Empedocles of Agrigentum] was descended appears to have been one of the most considerable and opulent in the colony. The common statement makes him a Pythagorean; but the authorities on which the assertion rests are in part of a late date, partly fabulous and opposed to all consistent chronology. In his system traces may, undoubtedly, be discovered of an acquaintance with Pythagorean tenets; but whatever he has adopted from this source is trifling, and in no degree trenching on the essential. (Ritter 1836: 489)
It's like saying that Aristotle was pythagorean because he is our most authoritative source on pythagorean philosophy.
He [Empedocles] describes himself as an immortal god, who, at his arrival at any place, was reverently honoured by men and women; even by his very dress announcing himself the priest and favourite of the gods. His pretensions to this high distinction [|] seem to have been supported by his more than human skill in medicine, his power over the weather, a gift of prophecy, and his insight into the nature and origin of things: and if he believed himself thereby exalted to the dignity of a god, he only assumed by anticipation an honour which he promised to all eminent individuals, soothsayers, priests, physicians, and princes of the people. (Ritter 1836: 490-491)
Oh, that guy: "I, an immortal God, no longer mortal, / wander among you, honoured by all, / adorned with holy diadems and blooming garlands." (Wikipedia: Empedocles)
This is intimated in several passages of his [Empedocles'] poem, in which an accidental motion of the elements is spoken of; so that we are forced to agree with Aristotle, that Empedocles in his cosmopœia left too much to chance; for with him the causes of motion lie in the moved things themselves - their hate or their love. In this restless movement the elements attain to various shapes and configurations; and it is herein that consists what has been called his migration of souls; which, however, is entirely different from the Pythagorean metempsychosis. Thus he might well say of himself, that he had once been a boy, [|] a maiden, a plant, a bird, a first of the sea; meaning thereby that the elementary constituents which are conjoined in his organised body had previously belonged to all these various formations. (Ritter 1836: 517-518)
IDK, if the souls are little else than "the floating particles in the sunbeam" (Ritter 1838: 407, above), then this interpretation might even be valid.
Besides, it ought not to be overlooked, that, although the older philosophers did at first adhere to the pristine sentiment of religion, they nevertheless freed themselves gradually from its restraint. Now and now something more was lost from the olden spirit of faith: religion itself was brought under examination, and was unable to bear the test of an inquiry, the principles of which were rejected by the next age as equally insufficient and groundless; till at last all certainty gave way to universal doubt. So early as in his day, Xenophanes had attached the anthropomorphic polytheism; and the whole sect of the Eleatœ, with the exception of Empedocles, appear to have handled the history of the gods with arbitrary and allegorising boldness. Even the pious Pythagorean adopted the olden god-lore merely in a peculiar sense of his own; Heraclitus argued against its probability; Anaxagoras understood it allegorically; and lastly, Hippo was regarded as an open and avowed atheist. (Ritter 1836: 530)
A challenge looming ahead: discerning the elements of Greek religion, and their peculiar employment, in the pythagorean creed - e.g. Hades, Apollo, Hermes, etc.
But as the atomistic doctrine proceeded also on the view, that form alone is the true essence of things, it has, so far, a resemblance to the Pythagorean physics; not, however, in a degree sufficient to justify our regarding it as a corrupt Pythagorism; for, on the one hand, its affinity to the mechanical physics is greater, and, on the other, this likeness holds only in a single aspect. It is certainly surprising that we are not able confidently to point out among the Sophists any corruption of the Pythagorean, as in the case of the other systems; for it cannot be doubted that this school exhibited a similar state of degeneracy and decline. We think, however, we can discern some symptoms of [|] this decay in the forced interpretations of Pythagorean doctrines which were afterwards regarded as exoterical, and which held that things are only so far as they resemble numbers; and in that trifling with numerical symbols which was the necessary consequence of such a view, the inanity of which was disguised beneath the mask of subtlety; and also in the opinion of the Syrian Ecphantus, whose date is uncertain, that numbers are corporeal, - a species of atomic doctrine, but not, therefore, necessarily resembling that of Democritus; and, finally, in the striking affectation of olden forms, and other singularities of the later Pythagoreans, which exposed their school to the ridicule of the comic writers of Athens. (Ritter 1836: 539-540)
The resemblance between pythagoreanism and atomism is indeed diminishingly faint. There probably wasn't much corrupt pythagoreanism among the sofists because the pythagoreans were so unitary in their doctrine, as was described above.
This, too, seems to have been a species a sophistry, not merely in science, but also in the art of life, quite consistent in those who looked to find wisdom in a mere observance of outward custom and habits. Thus we see the several tenets of the Pythagorean school - the theory of numbers, the derivation of properties from forms, and moral asceticism - falling to the ground, separately and in succession; while the other schools, whose organisation was less complicate, were more simple in their decay and termination. (Ritter 1836: 540)
Thus, even the downfall and decay of pythagoreanism was distinct from other schools of Greek philosophy.
Others, on the contrary, determine ti on the hypothesis that he [Leucippus] was a scholar of Parmenides, notwithstanding that other accounts [|] make him the disciple of Zeno, of Melissus, and even of Pythagoras. (Ritter 1836: 542-543)
From what I've seen here, I would not be surprised at all if pythagoreanism had indeed some effect on atomism.
It is said he [Democritus] enjoyed a personal intercourse with many of the most eminent men of his day; and undoubtedly he was acquainted with most of them by their writings at least and by fame. Thus, he mentioned in his works Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Protagoras, and highly extolled Pythagoras; from which fact it has been inferred that Philolaus, or some other Pythagorean, had been his teacher. (Ritter 1836: 545)
Perhaps extolled too highly.
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