Greeks that
the pole-star was not at the pole itself." Previous to that date, however,
the astronomer-priests must have noted the change in the heavens. On
descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers, whose entire religion and
civilization were based on the idea of fixity and rotation, the
unaccountable change in the order of the universe must indeed have
produced a deep impression. Under such conditions it seems but natural
that a great awakening of doubt and speculation should take place, that
worship should be transferred from stars known to be subject to change, to
the unseen, incomprehensible but ever-present eternal power which ruled
the universe.

Let us examine some of the records of the great intellectual movement that
swept at one time, like a wave, over the ancient centres of civilization.
The eighth, seventh and sixth centuries before our era are marked by the
growth of the Ionian philosophy which, as Huxley tells us, "was but one of
many results of the stirring of the moral and intellectual life of the
Aryan-Semitic population of Western Asia. The conditions of the general
awakening were doubtless manifold, but there is one which modern research
has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of extremely
ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the Euphrates and
the Nile.... The Ionian intellectual movement is only one of the several
sporadic indications of some powerful mental ferment over the whole of the
area comprised between the AEgean and Northern Hindustan...."(154)

Professor Schroeder's statement that, "in the seventh century B.C., the
idea of four, _i. e._ five elements, spread in India," is particularly
interesting in connection with the date assigned to the birth of the
Ionian intellectual movement. Of Pythagoras it is related that, like
Solon, "he had visited Egypt, also Phoenicia and Babylon, then Chaldean and
independent, and founded a brotherhood originally brought together by a
religious influence, with observances approaching to monastic peculiarity,
and working in a direction at once religious, political and scientific."
According to the learned translator of Cicero's first Tusculan
disputation(155) "it is generally accepted that Pherecydes of Syros (one
of the Cyclades islands in the AEgean sea) was the teacher of Pythagoras.
Pherecydes, who flourished about B.C. 544 is said to have derived his
knowledge from the secret books of the Phoenicians and from travels