was seven, justice was four, and marriage three. These identifications, with a few others like them, we may safely refer to Pythagoras or his immediate successors; but we must not attach too much importance to them. We must start, not from them, but from any statements we can find that present points of contact with the teaching of the Milesian school. These, we may fairly infer, belong to the system in its most primitive form.
53.Cosmology. Now the most striking statement of this kind is one of Aristotle's. The Pythagoreans held, he tells us, that there was "boundless breath" outside the heavens, and that it was inhaled by the world.[1] In substance, that is the doctrine of Anaximenes, and it becomes practically certain that it was taught by Pythagoras, when we find that Xenophanes denied it.[2] We may infer that the further development of the idea is also due to Pythagoras. We are told that, after the first unit had been formed—however that may have taken place—the nearest part of the Boundless was first drawn in and limited;[3] and that it is the Boundless thus inhaled that keeps the units separate from each other.[4] It represents the interval between them. This is a primitive way of describing discrete quantity.
- ↑ Arist. Phys. Δ, 6. 213 b 22 (R. P. 75).
- ↑ Diog. ix. 119 (R. P, 103 c), ὅλον δ' ὁρᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἀκούειν, μὴ μέντοι ἀναπνεῖν (φησι Ξενοφάνης) So in [Plut.] Strom. fr. 4 we read that Xenophanes held μὴ κατὰ πᾶν μέρος περιέχεσθαι ὑπὸ ἀέρος (τὴν γῆν). We may therefore ascribe the statement to Theophrastos without hesitation, in spite of the fact that Diogenes is here drawing on an inferior (biographical) source, as shown by Diels (Dox. p. 168). Cf. also Hipp. Ref. i. 14, 2,τὴν δὲ γῆν ἄπειρον εἶναι καὶ μήτε ὑπ' ἀέρος μήτε ὑπὸ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ περιέχεσθαι (Ξενοφάνης λέγει).
- ↑ Arist. Met. N, 3. 1091 a 13 (R. P. 74).
- ↑ Arist. Phys. Δ, 6. 213 b 23 (R. P. 75 a). The words διορίζει τὰς φύσεις have caused unnecessary difficulty, because they have been supposed to attribute the function of limiting to the ἄπειρον. Aristotle makes it quite clear that his meaning is that stated in the text. Cf. especially the words χωρισμοῦ τινος τῶν ἐφεξῆς καὶ διορίσεως. The term διωρισμένον, "discrete," is the proper antithesis to συνεχές, "continuous." In his work on the Pythagorean philosophy, Aristotle used instead the phrase διορίζει τὰς χώρας (Stob. i. p. 156, 8; R. P. 75), which is also quite intelligible if we remember what the Pythagoreans meant by χώρα (cf. p. 104, n. 2).
