erior to virtue, as being connected with the
contemplation of the upper and purer regions, while virtue was conversant
only with the sublunary part of the world. Happiness, they thought,
consisted in the science of the perfection of the soul; or in the perfect
science of numbers; and the main object of all the endeavours of man was
to be, to resemble the Deity as far as possible.

_Alcmaeon_ of Crotona was a pupil of Pythagoras; but that is all that is
known of his history. He was a great natural philosopher; and is said to
have been the first who introduced the practice of dissection. He is said,
also, to have been the first who wrote on natural philosophy. Aristotle,
however, distinguishes between the principles of Alcmaeon and Pythagoras,
though without explaining in what the difference consisted. He asserted
the immortality of the soul, and said that it partook of the divine
nature, because, like the heavenly bodies themselves, it contained in
itself the principle of motion.

_Xenophanes_, the founder of the Eleatic school, was a native of Colophon;
and flourished probably about the time of Pisistratus. Being banished from
his own country, he fled to the Ionian colonies in Sicily, and at last
settled in Elea, or Velia. His writings were chiefly poetical. He was
universally regarded by the ancients as the originator of the doctrine of
the oneness of the universe: he also maintained, it is said, the unity of
the Deity; and also his immortality and eternity; denounced the
transference of him into human form; and reproached Homer and Hesiod for
attributing to him human weaknesses. He represented him as endowed with
unwearied activity, and as the animating power of the universe.

_Heraclitus_ was an Ephesian, and is said to have been a pupil of
Xenophanes, though this statement is much doubted; others call him a pupil
of Hippasus the Pythagorean. He wrote a treatise on Nature; declaring that
the principle of all things was fire, from which he saw the world was
evolved by a natural operation; he further said that this fire was the
human life and soul, and therefore a rational intelligence guiding the
whole universe. In this primary fire he considered that there was a
perpetual longing to manifest itself in different forms: in its perfectly
pure state it is in heaven; but in order to gratify this longing it
descends, gradually losing the rapidity of its motion till it settles in
the earth. The earth, however, is not immov