The Battle of the Books; with selections from the literature of the Phalaris controversy/Appendix 2
Chapter VIII]
Of the learning of Pythagoras and the most ancient philosophers of Greece.
In my enquiries into the progress of learning during its obscurer ages, or those, at least, which are so to us at this distance, I shall begin with the accounts which are given of the learning of Pythagoras, rather than those of the more ancient Grecian sages; because his school made a much greater figure in the world than any of those which preceded Plato and Aristotle. In making a judgement upon the greatness of his performances, from the greatness of his reputation, one ought to consider how near to his time those lived, whose express relations of his life are the oldest we have.
Diogenes Laertius is the ancientest author extant that has purposely written the life of Pythagoras: according to Menagius's calculations he lived in Marcus Antoninus's time: and all that we learn from Diogenes is only that we know very little certainly about Pythagoras. He cites, indeed, great numbers of books, but those so very disagreeing in their relations that a man is confounded with their variety. Besides, the Grecians magnified everything that they commended so much that it is hard to guess how far they may be believed, when they write of men and actions at any distance from their own time. Graecia mendax was almost proverbial amongst the Romans. But by what appears from the accounts of the life of Pythagoras, he is rather to be ranked among the law-givers, with Lycurgus and Solon, and his own two disciples Zaleucus and Charondas, than amongst those who really carried learning to any considerable height. Therefore as some other legislators had or pretended to have supernatural assistances, that they might create a regard for their laws in the people to whom they gave them; so Pythagoras found out several equivalents which did him as much service. He is said, indeed, to have lived many years in Egypt, and to have conversed much with the philosophers of the east; but if he invented the XLVIIth proposition in the first book of Euclid, which is unanimously ascribed to him by all antiquity, one can hardly have a profound esteem for the mathematical skill of his masters. It is indeed a very noble proposition, the foundation of trigonometry, of universal and various use in those curious speculations about incommensurable numbers, which his disciples from him, and from them, the Platonists, so exceedingly admired. But this shows the infancy of geometry, in his days, in that very country which claims the glory of inventing it, to herself. It is probable, indeed, that the Egyptians might find it out, but then we ought also to take notice, that it is the only very considerable instance of the real learning of Pythagoras that is preserved; which is the more observable because the Pythagoreans paid the greatest respect to their master of any sect whatsoever, and so we may be sure that we should have heard much more of his learning, if much more could have been said, and though the books of Hermippus and Aristoxenus are lost, yet Laertius who had read them, and Porphyry, and Jamblichus, men of great reading and diffuse knowledge, who after Diogenes, wrote the life of the same Pythagoras, would not have omitted any material thing of that kind if they had anywhere met with it.
Amongst his other journeys Sir William Temple mentions Pythagoras's journey to Delphi. What that voyage of his is here remembered for, it is not easy to guess. Apollo's priestesses are not famous for discovering secrets in natural or mathematical matters, and as for moral truths, they might as well be known without going to Delphi to fetch them. Van Dalen in his Discourses of the Heathen Oracles has endeavoured to prove that they were only artifices of the priests, who gave such answers to enquirers as they desired—when they had either power or wealth to back their requests. If Van Dalen's hypothesis be admitted, it will strengthen my notion of Pythagoras very much, since when he did not care to live any longer in Samos, because of Polycrates's tyranny, and was desirous to establish to himself a lasting reputation for wisdom and learning amongst the ignorant inhabitants of Magna Graecia, where he settled upon his retirement, he was willing to have them think that Apollo was of his side. That made him establish the doctrine of transmigration of souls, which he brought with him out of India, that so those Italians might think that he had a certain reminiscence of things past since his first stage of life, and the beginning of the world, and upon that account admire him the more: for Laertius says that he pretended to remember everything that he had done formerly, whilst he was in those other bodies, and that he received this as an especial favour from Mercury, who gave him his choice of whatsoever he desired, except immortality. For these reasons also, he obliged his scholars to go through a trial of five years, to learn obedience by silence, and that afterwards it was granted to some few, as a particular favour, to be admitted into his presence. These things tended very much to impress a veneration of his person upon his scholars, but signified nothing to the advancement of learning; yea, rather hindered it. Those that live in the end of the world when everything, according to Sir William Temple, is in its declension, know no way so effectual to promote learning as much conversation and enquiry; and, which is more, they have no idea how it can be promoted without them. The learned men of the present age pretend to no acquaintance with Mercury or Apollo; and can do as little in natural knowledge by such a sham revelation as they can by reminiscence. If a man should, for five years together, read lectures. to one that was not allowed to make pauses or ask questions, another man in the ordinary road, by books and professors, would learn more at least to much better purpose-in six months, than he could in all that time.
Pythagoras was, without question, a wise man, well skilled in the arts of civil prudence, by which he appeased great disturbances in those Italian commonwealths. He had much more knowledge than any man of that age in Italy, and knew how to make the most of it. He took great delight in arithmetical speculations, which as Galileo not improbably guesses, he involved in mysteries, that so, ignorant people might not despise him for busying himself in such abstruse matters, which they could not comprehend, and if they could have comprehended did not know to what use to put them. He took a sure way to have all his studies valued, by obliging his scholars to resign up their understandings to his authority and dictates. The great simplicity of his manners, with the wisdom of his axioms and symbols, charmed an ignorant age, which found real advantages by following his peaceful measures, much above those that were formerly procured by rapine and violence. This seems to be a true account of Pythagoras, in the history of whose reputation there is nothing extraordinary, since civilisers of nations have always been as much magnified as the inventors of the most useful arts: but one can no more conclude from thence that Pythagoras knew as much as Aristotle or Democritus, than that Friar Bacon was as great a mathematician as Dr Barrow or Mr Newton, because he knew enough to be thought a conjurer in the age in which he lived, and no despicable person in any other.
But it may not be amiss to give a taste of some of the Pythagorean notions, such I mean as they first started in Europe, and chiefly valued themselves upon. Of this sort were their arithmetical speculations: by them they pretended to explain the causes of natural things. The following account of their explication of generation is taken out of Censorinus and Aristides:
"Perfect animals are generated in two distinct periods of time—some in seven months, some in nine. Those generations that are completed in seven months proceed in this order: in the first six days after conception, the humour is milky; in the next eight, it is turned into blood, which number 8 bears the proportion of 113 to 6; in nine days more it becomes flesh, 9 is in a sescuple proportion to 6; in twelve days more the embryo is formed, 12 is double to 6: here then are these stages—6, 8, 9, 12. 6 is the first perfect number, because it is the sum of 1, 2, 3, the only numbers by which it can be divided; now if we add these four numbers 6, 8, 9, 12 together, the sum is 35, which multiplied by 6, makes 210, the number of days from the conception to the birth—which is just seven months, allowing 30 days to a month. A like proportion must be observed in the larger period of nine months; only 10, the sum of 1, 2, 3, 4, added together, must be added to 35, which makes 45; that multiplied by 6 gives 270, or nine times 30, the number of days in larger births."
If these fine notions be compared with Dr Harvey's upon the same subject, no doubt but we shall all be converts to Sir William Temple's opinion, and make a vast difference between the poor observations of these later ages and the sublime flights of the ancients.
Now though abstracted mathematical theories, which cannot be relished by one that has not a tolerable skill in mathematics before, might perhaps prudently be concealed from the vulgar by the Pythagorean school, and in their stead such grave jargon as this imposed upon them, yet even that shews how little knowledge of nature they could pretend to. Men that aim at glory will omit no probable methods to gain it that lie in their way; and solid discoveries of a real insight into nature, would not only have been eternally true, but have charmed mankind at another rate, than such dry, sapless notions as seem at first view to have something of subtlety, but upon a second reflection appear vain and ridiculous.
From Pythagoras I shall go on to the ancient sages "who were so learned in Natural Philosophy that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, and storms at sea, great droughts and great plagues, much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain; not to mention the magical powers attributed to several of them, to allay storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease."
One of the ancientest of these was Thales: he was so deeply skilled in astronomy, that by the sun's annual course, he found out the equinoxes and solstices; he is said also first to have foretold eclipses; some geometrical properties of scalene triangles are ascribed to him, and challenged by Euphorbus: nice we are sure they were not, because the theorem of Pythagoras was not then found out.
When Sir William Temple extolled the skill of these ancient sages in foretelling changes of weather, he seems to have forgotten that he was in England, and fancied that these old philosophers were there too. The climates of Asia Minor and Greece are not so various as ours, and at some stated times of the year, of which the recurrent winds give them constant warning, they are often troubled with earthquakes, and always with violent tempests; so that by the conjectures that we are here able to make of the weather, at some particular seasons, though we labour under so great disadvantages, we may easily guess how much certainer predictions may be made by curious men, in serener and more regular climates, which will take off from that admiration that otherwise would be paid to those profound philosophers, even though we should allow that all those stories which are told of their skill are exactly true.
Besides there is reason to believe that we have the result of all the observations of these weather-wise sages in Aratus's Diosemeia and Vergil's Georgics, such as those upon the snuffs of candles, the croaking of frogs, and many others quite as notable as the English farmer's 'living weather glass,' his 'red cow that pricked up her tail'—an infallible presage of a coming shower.
Sir William Temple's method leads me now to consider, what estimate ought to be made of the learning of those nations from which he derives all the knowledge of these ancient Greeks. I shall only, therefore, give a short specimen of those discoveries with which these ancient sages enriched the ages in which they lived, as I have already done of the Pythagoreans, and then proceed.
Diogenes Laertius informs us of Empedocles's skill in magic, by the instance of his stopping those pestilential vapours that annoyed his town of Agrigentum. He took some asses, and flea'd them, and hung their hides over those rocks that lay open to the Etesian winds; which hindered their passage and so freed the town. He tells another story of Democritus, that he was so nice in his observations, that he could tell whether a young woman were a virgin, by her looks, and could find it out, though she had been corrupted but the day before: and he knew, by looking upon it, that some goat's milk, that was brought him, was of a black goat, that had had but one kid.
These are instances very seriously recorded by grave authors, of the magical wisdom of the ancients: that is, as Sir William Temple defines it, of that "excelling knowledge of nature and the various powers and qualities in its several productions, and the application of certain agents to certain patients, which by force of some peculiar qualities, produce effects very different from what fall under vulgar observation and comprehension."