Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources (34 page)

CHAPTER
4

O
F
THE
R
ATIONAL
P
ART
OF
THE
S
OUL:
THE
M
IND

A
ccording to Plutarch, Pythagoras defined the soul as, “A self-moving number,” adding that he takes number to be the same as a mind.
⁸⁴¹
The mind,
is induced into the soul
ab extrinseco
, from without, by divine participation
⁸⁴²
culled out as a small part of the universal Divine Mind.
⁸⁴³
For there is a soul intent and penetrating in all directions through the whole nature of things
⁸⁴⁴
from which our souls are plucked.
⁸⁴⁵
She is immortal, because that from which she is taken is immortal, yet not a god—but the work of the eternal God.
⁸⁴⁶
Thus Pythagoras confirmed the opinion of his master Pherecides, who first taught that the souls of men are sempiternal.

Our Souls (said he) consist of a tetrad: mind, science, opinion, sense. From this tetrad proceeds all art and science by which we ourselves are rational.
⁸⁴⁷
The mind therefore is a monad, for the mind considers according to a monad. By way of example, there are many men. These, one by one, are incomprehensible by sense and innumerable. But we understand this one man to which none has resemblance. And we understand one horse, for the particulars are innumerable. Thus every genus and species is according to monad, wherefore to everyone in particular they apply this definition—whether a rational creature or a neighing creature. Hence is the mind a monad, whereby we understand these things. The indeterminate duad is science. For all demonstration, and all belief of science, and likewise all syllogism from some things granted, infer that which is doubted. And they easily demonstrate another thing, the comprehension whereof is science. Therefore it is as the duad. Opinion is justly a triad, being of many. Triad implies a multitude, as, thrice happy Greeks—(The rest of the text is wanting.)

The Pythagoreans assert eight organs of knowledge: Sense,
Phantasie
, Art, Opinion, Prudence, Science, Wisdom, Mind.
⁸⁴⁸
Of these, we have in common with divine natures, art, prudence, science, mind. With beasts we share sense and Phantasie. Only opinion
is proper to us. Sense is a deceitful knowledge through the body; Phantasie, a motion in the soul; art, a habit of operating with reason. We add, “with reason,” for a spider also operates, but without reason. Prudence is a habit elective of that which is right in things to be done. Science is a habit of those things which are always the same and in the same manner. Wisdom is a knowledge of the First Cause. Mind is the principle and fountain of all good things.

CHAPTER
5

O
F
THE
T
RANSMIGRATION
OF
THE
S
OUL

W
hat he delivered to his auditors (says Porphyry) none can certainly affirm, for there was a great and strict silence observed amongst them.
⁸⁴⁹
But the most known are these: First, he said that the soul is immortal; then, that it enters into other kinds of living creatures. (Or, as Laertius expresses it: He first asserted that the soul, passing through the circle of necessity, lives as several times in different living creatures.)
⁸⁵⁰
Moreover, that after some periods, the same things that are now generated are generated again; that nothing is simply new. And that we ought to esteem all animate creatures to be of the same kind with us.

These doctrines Pythagoras seems to have brought first into Greece. Diodorus Siculus affirms, he learned them of the Egyptians.
⁸⁵¹
They were the first who asserted that the soul of man is immortal, and the body perishing, it always passes into another body. And when it has run through all things terrestrial, marine, volatile, it again enters into some generated human body. This circuit is completed in three thousand years. This opinion (adds Herodotus) some of the Greeks have usurped as their own—some more ancient, others later—whose names knowingly I omit.
⁸⁵²

Pythagoras (says Theodoret), Plato, Plotinus, and the rest of that sect acknowledged souls to be immortal. They asserted that souls are preexistent to bodies, and that there is an innumerable company of souls. Those which transgress are sent down into bodies, so as being purified by such discipline, they may return to their own place. Those which while they are in bodies lead a wicked life, are sent down farther into irrational creatures, hereby to receive punishment and right expiation: the angry and malicious into serpents, the ravenous into wolves, the audacious into lions, the fraudulent into foxes, and the like.

Upon this ground (as some conceive) it was that he forbade to eat flesh.
⁸⁵³
For we ought to esteem all animals creatures to be of the same kind with us,
⁸⁵⁴
and to have common right with us, and to be
allied (in a manner) to us.
⁸⁵⁵
Whence a bean is by Horace styled
cognata Pythagorae
, because he forbade it to be eaten upon the grounds that men and beans arose out of the same putrefaction.
⁸⁵⁶

This assertion he defended by many instances, particularly of himself. Heraclides relates the following.
⁸⁵⁷
Pythagoras said he had been in former times Aethalides, esteemed the son of Mercury. (Aethalides was a powerful orator who wrote two treatises, the one mournful, the other pleasant.
⁸⁵⁸
Like Democritus and Heraclitus, he bewailed and derided the instability of life, and was said to die and live from day to day.) Pythagoras related that Mercury bade him (as Aethalides) request whatsoever he would, immortality only excepted. He desired that he might preserve the remembrance of all actions, alive and dead. Whereupon he remembered all things while he lived, and after death, retained the same memory. That afterwards he came to be Euphorbus and was slain by Menelaus.

Now Euphorbus said that he had been in former times Aethalides, and that he had received this gift from Mercury: to know the migration of the soul as it passed from one body to another; and into what plants and animals it migrated; and what thing his soul suffered after death; and what other souls suffered. Euphorbus dying, his soul passed into Hermotimus. Now Hermotimus, desiring to profess who he was, went to the Branchidae. Coming into the Temple of Apollo, he pointed to the shield which Menelaus had hung up there. He said, that upon his return from Troy, he had dedicated that shield to Apollo, it being then old, and nothing remaining but the Ivory stock. (But Porphyry and Iamblichus affirm it was dedicated, together with other Trojan spoils, to Argive Iano in her Temple at Mycenae.)

As soon as Hermotimus died, he became Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and again remembered all things: how he had been first Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and lastly Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and remembered all that we have said.

Others relate that he said he had been first Euphorbus; secondly, Aethalides; thirdly, Hermotimus; fourthly, Pyrrhus; and lastly, Pythagoras.
⁸⁵⁹
Clearchus and Dicaearchus said that he had been first
Euphorbus; then Pyrander; then Calliclea; then a beautiful courtesan, named Alce.
⁸⁶⁰
For this reason, of all Homer's verses he did especially praise these, and set them to the harp, and often repeated them as his own funeral ode.

As by some hand, a tender Olive set
In a lone place, near a smooth Rivolet:
Fair she shoots up, and, fan'd on every side
By amorous winds, displays her blooming pride;
Until some churlish unexpected gust
Plows up her root, and buries her in dust.
So by Alcides slain Euphorbus lay,
Stretch'd on the ground, his Arms the Victor's prey.

Hence in his person, Ovid.
⁸⁶¹

O you, whom horrors of cold death affright,
Why fear you Styx? vain names, and endless night,
The dreams of Poets, and feign'd miseries
Of forged Hell? Whether last-flames surprise,
Or age devours your bodies; they nor grieve,
Nor suffer pains. Our souls for ever live:
Yet evermore their ancient houses leave
To live in new, which them, as guests receive.
In Trojan Wars, I (I remember well)
Euphorbus was, Pantheus son, and fell
By Menelaus Lance: my shield again
At Argos late I saw in Juno's fane.
All alter, nothing finally decays;
Hither and thither still the spirit strays,
Guest to all bodies, out of beasts it flys
To men, from men to beasts, and never dies.
As pliant wax each new impression takes,
Fixed to no form, but still the old forsakes,
Yet is the same: so souls the same abide,
Though various species their reception hide.
Then lest thy greedy belly should destroy
(I prophesy) depressed piety,
For bear t'expulse thy kindreds Ghosts with food
By death procur'd, nor nourish blood with blood.
⁸⁶²

Neither did he instance himself only, but put many others also in mind of the accidents of their former life: how they had lived before their souls were confined the second time to the body.
⁸⁶³
This he did (adds Porphyry
⁸⁶⁴
) to those whose souls were rightly purified, such was Millias of Crotona, whom he caused to call to memory, that he had been Midas son of Gordias. Whereupon Millias went to Epire to perform some Funeral rites as he appointed.
⁸⁶⁵

CHAPTER
6

T
HE
S
EPARATE
L
IFE
OF
THE
S
OUL

T
he soul has a twofold life: separate from, and within the body. Her faculties are otherwise in anima, otherwise in animali.
⁸⁶⁶

The soul is incorruptible; for when it goes out of the body, it goes to the soul of the world which is of the same kind.
⁸⁶⁷

When she goes out upon the earth, she walks in the air like a body.
⁸⁶⁸
Mercury is the keeper of souls and for that reason is called called
[“the Escorter”], and
[“the keeper of the gate”], and
[“of the underworld”], because he brings souls out of bodies in the earth and the sea—of which those that are pure he leads into a high place. The impure come not to them, nor to one another, but are bound by the Furies in indissoluble chains.

The Pythagoreans affirmed that the souls of the dead neither cast a shadow, nor wink; for that it is the Sun which causes the shadow.
⁸⁶⁹
But he who enters there is by the law of the place deprived of the Sun's light, which they signify in that speech.

Pythagoras held that earthquakes proceed from no other cause but the meeting of the dead.
⁸⁷⁰