arkable schools of philosophy which, as we have
seen, were thus developed at the confines of the Greek world, and
which were presently to invade and, as it were, take by storm the
mother-country itself.

As to the personality of these pioneer philosophers of the West, our
knowledge is for the most part more or less traditional. What has been
said of Thales may be repeated, in the main, regarding Pythagoras,
Parmenides, and Empedocles. That they were real persons is not at all in
question, but much that is merely traditional has come to be associated
with their names. Pythagoras was the senior, and doubtless his ideas may
have influenced the others more or less, though each is usually spoken
of as the founder of an independent school. Much confusion has all along
existed, however, as to the precise ideas which were to be ascribed to
each of the leaders. Numberless commentators, indeed, have endeavored
to pick out from among the traditions of antiquity, aided by such
fragments, of the writing of the philosophers as have come down to us,
the particular ideas that characterized each thinker, and to weave these
ideas into systems. But such efforts, notwithstanding the mental energy
that has been expended upon them, were, of necessity, futile, since, in
the first place, the ancient philosophers themselves did not specialize
and systematize their ideas according to modern notions, and, in the
second place, the records of their individual teachings have been too
scantily preserved to serve for the purpose of classification. It
is freely admitted that fable has woven an impenetrable mesh of
contradictions about the personalities of these ancient thinkers, and it
would be folly to hope that this same artificer had been less busy with
their beliefs and theories. When one reads that Pythagoras advocated an
exclusively vegetable diet, yet that he was the first to train athletes
on meat diet; that he sacrificed only inanimate things, yet that he
offered up a hundred oxen in honor of his great discovery regarding
the sides of a triangle, and such like inconsistencies in the same
biography, one gains a realizing sense of the extent to which diverse
traditions enter into the story as it has come down to us. And yet we
must reflect that most men change their opinions in the course of a long
lifetime, and that the antagonistic reports may both be true.

True or false, these fables have an abiding interest, since they prove
the unique and