Stolen Legacy

Page 58



Page 58

of the intellect through the pursuit of scientific knowledge and strict bodily discipline.

In this process, music also held an important place. The Pythagoreans believed and taught that just as medicine is used to cure the body, so music must be used to cure the soul.

Here it might be appropriate to insert the doctrine of the "Three Lives", since it is also a method and means of purification:--

"Mankind is divided into three classes: Lovers of wealth; lovers of honour, and lovers of wisdom (i.e. philosophers); this last, being highest." According to Pythagoras, philosophy determined the purification, which led to the final salvation of the soul.

(iii) The Cosmological Doctrine

All things are numbers, that is to say not only every object, but the entire universe is an arrangement of numbers. This means that the characteristic of any object is the number by which it is represented.

(a) Since the universe consists of ten bodies, namely, the five stars, the earth and the counter earth, then the universe must be represented by the perfect number ten.

(b) Applied to the space around us, but called by Pythagoreans the Boundless or Unlimited, it must be taken to mean, the measuring out of this Boundless, into a balanced and harmonious universe, so that everything might receive its proper proportion of it. No more, no less.

(c) This arrangement seems to suggest the notion of forms capable of receiving a mathematical expression, i.e., a doctrine which later appeared in Plato, as the theory of Ideas.

(d) In the centre of the universe there is a central fire around which the heavenly bodies fixed in