imony of
antiquity that such was the origin of the knowledge of Pythagoras,
asserting that the constitution of the Egyptian priesthood rendered it
impossible for a foreigner to become initiated. They forget that the
ancient system of that country had been totally destroyed in the great
revolution which took place more than a century before those times. If
it were not explicitly stated by the ancients that Pythagoras lived for
twenty-two years in Egypt, there is sufficient internal evidence in his
story to prove that he had been there a long time. As a connoisseur can
detect the hand of a master by the style of a picture, so one who has
devoted attention to the old systems of thought sees, at a glance, the
Egyptian in the philosophy of Pythagoras.

He passed into Italy during the reign of Tarquin the Proud, and settled
at Crotona, a Greek colonial city on the Bay of Tarentum. At first he
established a school, but, favoured by local dissensions, he gradually
organized from the youths who availed themselves of his instructions a
secret political society. Already it had passed into a maxim among the
learned Greeks that it is not advantageous to communicate knowledge too
freely to the people--a bitter experience in persecutions seemed to
demonstrate that the maxim was founded on truth. The step from a secret
philosophical society to a political conspiracy is but short. Pythagoras
appears to have taken it. The disciples who were admitted to his
scientific secrets after a period of probation and process of
examination constituted a ready instrument of intrigue against the
state, the issue of which, after a time, appeared in the supplanting of
the ancient senate and the exaltation of Pythagoras and his club to the
administration of government. The actions of men in all times are
determined by similar principles; and as it would be now with such a
conspiracy, so it was then; for, though the Pythagorean influence spread
from Crotona to other Italian towns, an overwhelming reaction soon set
in, the innovators were driven into exile, their institutions destroyed,
and their founder fell a victim to his enemies.

The organization attempted by the Pythagoreans is an exception to the
general policy of the Greeks. The philosophical schools had been merely
points of reunion for those entertaining similar opinions; but in the
state they can hardly be regarded as having had any political existence.

[Sidenote: His miracles.]

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