One might as well
praise John Knox for creating the commons of Scotland with a view to the
future prosperity of that country - a consummation which his black
fanaticism assuredly never foresaw.
The chief practical doctrine of Pythagoras, that mankind are to be
governed on the principle of a community of eastern monks, makes for the
disintegration of rational civic life.
And his chief theoretical doctrines, of metempsychosis and the reduction
of everything to a system of numbers [Footnote: Vincenzo Dorsa, an
Albanian, has written two pamphlets on the survival of Greco-Roman
traditions in Calabria. They are difficult to procure, but whoever is
lucky enough to find them will be much helped in his understanding of
the common people. In one place, he speaks of the charm-formula of
Otto-Nave! (Eight-Nine) It is considered meet and proper, in the
presence of a suckling infant, to spit thrice and then call out, three
times, Otto-Nove! This brings luck; and the practice, he thinks, is an
echo of the number-system of Pythagoras.] - these are sheer lunacy.
Was it not something of a relapse, after the rigorous mental discipline
of old, to have a man gravely assuring his fellows that he is the son of
Hermes and the divinely appointed messenger of Apollo; treating
diseases, like an Eskimo Angekok, by incantation; recording veracious
incidents of his experiences during a previous life in Hell, which he
seems to have explored almost as thoroughly as Swedenborg; dabbling in
magic, and consulting dreams, birds and the smoke of incense as oracles?
And in the exotic conglomerate of his teachings are to be found the
prima stamina of much that is worse: the theory of the pious fraud
which has infected Latin countries to this day; the Jesuitical maxim of
the end justifying the means; the insanity of preferring deductions to
facts which has degraded philosophy up to the days of Kant; mysticism,
demon-worship and much else of pernicious mettle - they are all there,
embryonically embedded in Pythagoras.
We are told much of his charity; indeed, an English author has written a
learned work to prove that Pythagoreanism has close affinities with
Christianity. Charity has now been tried on an ample scale, and has
proved a dismal failure. To give, they say, is more blessed than to
receive. It is certainly far easier, for the most part, to give than to
refrain from giving. We are at last shaking off the form, of
self-indulgence called charity; we realize that if mankind is to profit,
sterner conceptions must prevail. The apotheosis of the god-favoured
loafer is drawing to a close.
For the rest, there was the inevitable admixture of quackery about our
reforming sage; his warmest admirers cannot but admit that he savours
somewhat strongly of the holy impostor.
