As it is, he may be regarded as the Father of Metaphysics or Mystical Philosophy. Without him, Plato would have been another being altogether; and without Plato, Spiritual Thought would have had a more meagre existence than it has now in this matter-of-fact, materially inclined world of ours.

Other minor doctrines of Pythagoras are so garbled and disfigured by their various recorders that it is useless to quote them. Let the noble figure in the white robes,. with the earnest gold-crowned brow, fade-leaving only our reverence for the intellect that had such faith in the Almighty Power, that it left no thought unused which could reconcile It with the Universe as it appears to us.

CHAPTER III.

THE ELEATICS.

A Passing Tribute to Anaximander, also Mathematician.

Eleatics Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno.

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In the history of
Those who know

It is not only among the followers of the Arts that pupils have proved greater than their master. Philosophy such instances are constant. the life and doctrines of Pythagoras by heart might even hesitate to reply, if asked what was the story and what were the tenets of Anaximander of Miletus; yet he is generally ranked before Pythagoras.

Anaximander was by some considered the friend and pupil of Thales, and his co-operation with Pythagoras is authentic.

That he was actually the Founder of the Mathematical School is undoubted. That Pythagoras was taught-or, more properly speaking, led and influenced-by him, is certain.

Anaximander, who was existent at Miletus some twenty years before Pythagoras, was essentially the man of science. His work on the size and position of the heavenly bodies is stated to be the first philosophical treatise, and he compiled a series of geometrical problems. Whether he met Pythagoras at Miletus, at Apollonia-where he and his followers colonised-or at the court of Polycrates, in Samos, cannot be decided.

But that the extraordinary ideas developed in the vast mind of Pythagoras were inspired by Anaximander is more

than probable. We are told that Anaximander first used the term Infinite; that he considered separate life, as it was evident to his senses in plants, animals, and human beings, to be the effect of the decomposition or movement of the One Infinite. Here we may trace the source, the spring, of the doctrine of Metempsychosis according to Pythagoras.

In passing to another School, it must not be thought that one system of Philosophy superseded the last, like one story of a house is built upon another. Many systems were co-existent, ran parallel with each other, for centuries; being stronger or weaker, and more or less influential, according to their powers of attraction for the mental life of the period and the genius of their founders. Those among the founders whose minds were largest studied their age, and as far as possible adapted their systems to its prevailing characteristics; thus they dug deep before planting their roots, and their systems waxed big and remained. The time when Pythagoras lived was the time when Egypt was the magnet of the world, and Egypt was the very mother of the mystical and mysterious. Therefore Pythagoras wisely chose to enwrap his science in a maze, whither his followers were, so to speak, led blindfold. Had Anaximander done likewise, his name might meet our eyes writ in less faded characters.

The next School historians call the Eleatic, because its principal leaders settled or colonised in Elea, a town in that part of the late kingdom of Naples which is called "Terra di Lavoro." This Elea was founded by the Phocæans of Ionia, and amid the surrounding smiling country, with its blue mountains, its groves of elms and poplars-around and about which rich vines threw their tender foliage, and its shallow rivers or mountain streams, that run rapidly to join the undulating tideless sea, the Mediterranean-the Eleatic Philosophy was born and bred.

Xenophanes, who is considered the founder of the method, was a native of Colophon, a city of Asia Minor;

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and, though the exact dates of his birth and death are unattainable, appears to have been a contemporary of Anaximander.

He was exiled-perhaps because of his opinions—and he lived for some time wandering in Sicily, a poor minstrel or rhapsodist, singing or declaiming his own verses. But fragments only of these are recorded, with the exception of a long epic relating the foundation of Elea.

During his wanderings, perhaps when his physical nature was suffering from the privations of poverty and the rebuffs poverty would naturally bring to him, his aspirations were crowned with reward. His mind leapt the chasm of unexplored thought, and found an unexpected mine. He came upon the great Idea which was subsequently called Pantheism-the doctrine that there is but One, and that this One is the First Cause or Almighty Power and the Universe combined.

Rejecting Thales' physical and Pythagoras' mathematical solution of the great problem of Existence, he mystically declared that the Almighty was the sphere encompassing all, at once the Universe and its Causethe Immovable, containing the many movable.

Whether this notion should be read in the letter or in the spirit has been greatly discussed. For the term "sphere" is used in Greek as an image of the perfect unity and equality of God, as "square" was used for a similar purpose by poets, notably by the well-known Simonides. In any case, the idea was fresh, as new indeed as the method by which he attempted to prove it.. Ridiculing Pythagoras' doctrine of Metempsychosis, Xenophanes passionately refuted the system of deities promulgated by Homer and Hesiod-whose works he attacked in various poems of different metres-and he threw himself headlong into the abyss of doubt by convincing himself that Reason could not prove or disprove a proposition. Nothing was positive except that there was One Substance, and that all was included in that One.

With his logical and systematic mind, which found itself powerless to cope with and grasp his enormous visions, he must have lived and died a disappointed man; and this is shown by his vaccillations, and the bitterness with which he attacked myths he was impotent to extinguish by argument.

Clearer, more distinct in the shadowy line of figures than this old man, who gave up wealth and the comforts of life to gain but little in exchange, are two who stand close together, whose names are linked in the Eleatic Philosophy. They are the followers of Xenophanes, born some sixty or eighty years later-Parmenides and Zeno, who stood to each other almost in the relation of father and son.

Parmenides was born at Elea about 530 years before Christ. His father was rich, and could, therefore, afford his gifted son every advantage of education. He is stated to have been the pupil of two Pythagoreans, Ameinias and Diochotes, the latter of whom led him to forsake a career of dissipation and revelry, such as the gilded youth of Athens knew so well how to pursue, and which naturally enticed and fascinated a brilliant and passionate temperament.

Doubtless in one of the moods of depression and disgust following upon one of these orgies, Diochotes seized a favourable moment to make a lasting impression upon his pupil. Being an early Pythagorean, the rules of the Italian Society would hardly have been abandoned by him, and he may then and there have bound Parmenides in the mystic bonds of oaths and ceremonies which at all times have been so potent a harness for fiery youth. In any case, the conversion of Parmenides from the man of pleasure to the earnest Philosopher is attributed to Diochotes.

But Parmenides, if not actually the pupil of Xenophanes, accepted his new and extraordinary propositions -in those days revolutionary in the world of thought