Proxenos is come in by appointment and has broken off an old story which you know as well as I do. I will give you his; but not without an account from you in return, of what is going on among the craft at Athens.

CLXXVI. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

The

together with Pericles on this extraordinary man, in devoting his blood at the altar; Ctesibias, on regretting that so little is known of him in the the bosom of his friend. midst of his celebrity. Hardly a century hath elapsed since he left his native Samos, and settled on the peaceful shores of Italy. His presence, his precepts, his authority, his example, were unavailing to the preservation of that tranquillity, which the beauty of the climate, the fertility of the soil, and the freedom of the institutions, ought to have established and perpetuated. But it is in the regions of the earth as in the regions of the air; Secrecy and mystery drive the uninitiated into the warm and genial are absorbed by the cold and suspicion and distrust: an honest man never will void, and tempests and storms ensue. The happi- propose, and a prudent man never will comply ness of thousands is the happiness of too many, with, the condition. What is equitable and proin the close calculation of some inexpert contriver; per lies wide open on the plain, and is accessible and he spoils the honey by smoking the hive. No to all, without an entrance through labyrinth or sooner is a nation at ease, than he who should be defile. I do not love Pythagoras nor Epimenides, the first to participate in the blessing, is the most nor indeed my friend Socrates so much as peruneasy; and, when at last he has found a place to haps I should, who however, beside his cleverness, his mind, before he lies down he scratches a hole has many good qualities. He, like Pythagoras, in it, as the dogs do. Such had been the case at is endowed with an extraordinary share of intel Samos, and such was likewise the case at Croton. lect; but neither of them has attained the fixed The difference lay merely in this. Polycrates was and measured scope of true philosophy: the one a man of abilities, and capable of holding the being in perpetual motion to display his surpris government in his single hand: he loved power, ing tricks of rhetorical ingenuity, which tend only he loved pleasure, he contented the populace, and to the confusion of truth and falsehood, and conhe reconciled the wise: Croton was subject to sequently to indifference in the choice of them; the discretion of an oligarchy, incompetent, arro- the other was no less active and restless in the gant, jealous, and unjust. It is untrue that Py-acquisition and maintenance of power. thagoras was ever at enmity with him, or was business of philosophy is to examine and estimate treated by him with disrespect. The one was as all those things which come within the cognifond of authority as the other, and neither was zance of the understanding. Speculations on any willing to divide it. Whatever could be done to that lie beyond, are only pleasant dreams, leaving promote the studies of the philosopher was done the mind to the lassitude of disappointment. spontaneously by the chief magistrate, who gave They are easier than geometry and dialectics; him letters of recommendation to the king of they are easier than the efforts of a well-regulated Egypt. By these, and perhaps by these only, could imagination in the structure of a poem. These he ever have penetrated into the innermost are usually held forth by them as feathers and recesses of the priesthood. Conversing with them, thistle-down; yet condescend they nevertheless and observing their power over the people, he to employ them; numerals as matter and mind; lost nothing of his inclination to possess the same, harmony as flute and fiddle-strings to the dances and added much to the means of acquiring it. of the stars. In their compositions they adopt Epimenides the Cretan was perhaps the exemplar the phraseology and curtsey to the cadences of he had resolved to follow, but with mitigated poetry. Look nearer; and what do you see before severity. Solon with all his wisdom, and never you? the limbs of Orpheus, bloodless, broker, had mortal more, was unable to bring back the swollen, and palpitating on the cold and misty Athenians to the simplicity and equity of their waters of the Hebrus. Such are the rhapsodical forefathers. Knowing well their propensity to scraps in their visionary lucubrations. They superstition, which always acts with its greatest would poison Homer, the purest and soundest of intensity on the cruel and the loose, he invited moralists, the most ancient and venerable of phiEpimenides to come and overawe them by his losophers, not out of any ill-will to him, but out sanctity and his sacrifices. We can not doubt that of love to the human race. There is often an enhe left the whole management of their conversion chantment in their sentences, by which the ear is to the discretion of the stranger. An Epimenides, captivated, and against which the intellectual in all ages of the world, will possess more influence powers are disinclined to struggle; and there is than a Solon. Lustrations and sacrifices followed sometimes, but very rarely, a simplicity of manprodigies and omens; and among the marvels ner, which wins like truth. But when ambition and miracles which the Cretan seer displayed, the leads them toward the poetical, they fall flat upon last was the greatest in the eyes of Athens. He thorny ground. No writer of florid prose ever announced his determination to return home, and was more than a secondary poet. Poetry, in her refused all the honours and riches the people high estate, is delighted with exuberant abunwould have lavished on him. Epimenides wanted dance, but imposes on her worshipper a severity of nothing the Gods were less moderate; they re-selection. She has not only her days of festival, quired a human victim. Cratinos was too happy but also her days of abstinence, and, unless upon

:

some that are set apart, prefers the graces of sedateness to the revelry of enthusiasm. She rejects, as inharmonious and barbarous, the mimicry of her voice and manner by obstreperous sophists and argute grammarians, and she scatters to the winds the loose fragments of the schools. Socrates and his disciples run about the streets, pick up every young person they meet with, carry him away with them, and prove to him that everything he ever heard is false, and everything he ever said is foolish. He must love his father and mother in their way, or not at all. The only questions they ask him are those which they know he can not answer, and the only doctrines they inculcate are those which it is impossible he should understand. He has now fairly reached sublimity, and looks of wonder are interchanged at his progress. Is it sublime to strain our vision into a fog? and must we fancy we see far because we are looking where nobody can see farther ?

CLXXVII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

The Massilian is intelligent and communicative. Some matters which he related at our conference you will perhaps remember in Herodotus: others are his own story; so let him tell the whole in his own manner.

vigour of life; and not many years elapsed ere he beheld the overthrow of his institutions. He is reported by some to have attained an extreme old age, which his tranquillity and temperance render probable. Even without this supposition, he may perhaps have visited the coast of Gaul, before or after the arrival of the Phocæans. Collecting, we may imagine, additional forces from the many Ionians whom the generals of Cyrus had expelled, they began to build the city of Massilia, not long after the settlement at Elea, which the vicinity of powerful states, and its incapacity and insecurity for the mooring of a navy, rendered ineligible as the seat of government, or as a constant station."

Thus much I had collected from Proxenos, when he began to give me information on anchorages and harbours, imports and exports: I could not in common civility interrupt him, or ask anything better than what it pleased him to bestow on me. As our acquaintance strengthens, I will draw more unreservedly from his stores.

CLXXVIII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

Proxenos runs into some errors both in regard to facts and motives. It is false that Pythagoras, on returning from his voyage in Egypt, was indignant at finding a tyrant in his native city. Polycrates was in possession of the supreme power when the philosopher left the island, and used it with clemency and discretion. The traveller might have gone and might have returned with discontent, but indignation is averse to favours, and these he was by no means reluctant to accept. Finding he could not be the principal man among his fellow-citizens, he resolved to attain that rank where the supremacy was yet unoccupied. He had seen enough of the Egyptian and heard enough of the Indian priesthood, to convince him that, by a system somewhat similar to theirs, absolute power was more attainable and more safe. He took lessons and precautions; and wherever there was a celebrated and ancient temple, he visited its priests, and explored the origin and conduct of their institutions and authority. In recompense for these, he is reported to have raised his tunic to the holy ones at Olympia, and to have displayed a golden thigh. Nothing so royal, so godlike, had been seen since the reign of Pelops. A golden thigh is worth an ivory shoulder. Such a miracle, we may be sure, was not altogether lost upon the prophetess at Delphi, the fair Themistocleia, who promulgated to him her secrets in return.

"The unbroken force of Persia was brought under the walls of Phocæa. Harpagos, equally wise and generous, offered to our citizens the most favourable terms of surrender. They requested one day for deliberation. Aware of their intentions, he dissembled his knowledge, and allowed them to freight their ships, embark, and sail away. His clemency was however no security to his garrison. Within a few days the expatriated citizens landed again, slew every Persian within the walls, then, casting a mass of iron into the sea, swore they would never return a second time until it rose and floated on the surface. Some historians would persuade us that, after this cruel vengeance, this voluntary and unanimous oath, the greater part returned. Such a tale is idle and absurd. The Persians would too surely have inflicted due vengeance on their perfidy. Some however did indeed separate from the main body of the emigration, and came to reside here in Lampsacos, which their ancestors had founded, and where they continued on the most hospitable terms by frequent intermarriages. The bulk of the expedition reached Alalia, a colony of theirs, led recently into Corsica. Here they continued to reside but a little time unmolested by the jealousy of the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians. Undaunted by the coalition against them, and by His doctrines were kept within his own circle, the loss of many ships in a battle with the united under the safeguard of an oath. This in all fleet of the confederates, they sailed to the neigh- countries is and ought to be forbidden, as being bourhood of the more ancient Grecian cities, and the prerogative of the magistracy. Love of sufounded Elea, near Poseidonia. And now pro-premacy was the motive in all his injunctions and bably they first became acquainted with the dis- in all his actions. He avoided the trouble of ciples of Pythagoras. He himself, it is said, office and the danger of responsibility: he excluded retired to Metaponton, and died there. When the commons, and called to him the nobles, who he went from Samos to Croton he was in the alone were deemed worthy of serving him. Among

here

these he established an equality, which, together presents they have received from her at the feet with the regularity and frugality of their living, of History. Thus did Herodotus, thus did must have tended to conciliate and gratify in some Hecatæus, and thus, let me hope, will Anaxago measure the poorer citizens. Certain kinds of ras. The deeds of past ages are signally reflected animal food were forbidden, as in India and other on the advancing clouds of the future countries less remote, but, contrary to what we have insurrections and wrecks and conflagrations; here often heard asserted, no species of pulse or veget- the ascending, there the drooping diadem; the able. 'Abstain from the bean' signified 'abstain from mighty host, the mightier man before it; and, in elections to political employments.' The teacher was the serener line on the horizon, the emersion of in the place of parent to his disciples, who appear cities and citadels over far-off seas. There are to have renounced all the natural affections that those who know in what quarter to look for them: had sprung up before they entered the society. but it is rarely to their hands the power of proHis regimen was mild and generous : its principal moting the good, or averting the evil, is entrusted. merit was, however, the repression of loquacity; Yet, O Anaxagoras! all is not hideous in the common in the ardour of youth after its chase in past, all is not gloomy in the future. There are the fields of knowledge; commoner, and more un- communities where the best and wisest are not becoming, in the morose repose of an arrogant utterly cast aside, and where the robe of Philosophy philosophy. The history of Pythagoras, forasmuch is no impediment to the steps of men. Idly do as he interests us in being the leader of a sect and our sages cry out against the poets for mistuning of a party, is neither long nor obscure. The the heart and misgoverning the intellect. Meancommons of Croton soon began to perceive that, while they themselves are occupied in selfish under his management, the sons of the aristocracy vanities on the side of the affections; and, on the would be no better inclined than their fathers had side of the understanding, in fruitless, frivolous, been to concede them an equal share in the govern- indefinite, interminable disquisitions. ment and the rulers themselves, day after day, thoughts are to be reduced to powder. I would lost somewhat of authority in their families. rather it were for an ingredient in a love-potion, During the whole time that he had resided in to soften with sympathies the human heart, than Italy, the people of nearly all the Greek cities a charm for raising up spectres to contract and to heaved indignantly under oppressive oligarchies. coerce it. If dust is to be thrown into our eyes, Sybaris, whose health they were absorbing in let it be dust from under a bright enlivening sun, more than Circæan luxuries, rose first upon her feet, and not the effect of frost and wind. and expelled the council of five hundred. They retired for refuge to the lords of Croton; and, when the Sybarites called for justice on them, the demand was voted an affront. And now indeed the veil of sanctity and seclusion was violently rent by the disciples of the Samian. He incited them to maintain peace and good government; pointed out to them the phantom of Freedom, how it blasted every region it past over; and adjured them to the defence of their rulers by the purity of their religion. They marched, fought a battle, won it, and Sybaris was swept from the earth.

Discord, I suspect, O Aspasia ! is the readiest of all the Deities to appear at our invocation. The oligarchs of Croton, long accustomed to uncontrolled power and irresponsible injustice, refused to the army, now comprehending all the active citizens, even the smallest portion of the spoils. Again did the Crotoniats cry to arms; and again, and in a better cause, were conquerors. Pythagoras and his disciples fled before them, and the hall in which they assembled was reduced to ashes.

It is only a free city that is strong; for it is only in a free city that the mass of the people can be armed.

CLXXIX. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.

Men of powerful minds, although they never give up Philosophy, yet cease by degrees to make their professions in form, and lay ultimately the

*Pythagoras was a Præ-jesuit.

CLXXX. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.

If our

Philosophy is but dry bread: men will not live upon it, however wholesome: they require the succulent food and exciting cup of Religion. We differ in bodily strength, in compactness of bone, and elasticity of sinew; but we all are subject to the same softness, and nearly to the same distemperature, in the nobler animators of the frame, the brain and blood. Thus it is in creeds; the sage and simple, the ardent enthusiast and the patient investigator, fall into and embrace with equal pertinacity the most absurd and revolting tenets. There are as many wise men who have venerated the ibis and cat, as there are who have bent their heads before Zeus and Pallas. No extravagance in devotion but is defended by some other towering above it; no falsehood but whose features are composed to the semblance of truth. By some people those things are adored that eat them; by others, those that they eat. Men must rest here: superstition, satiated and gorged, can go no farther.

The progression of souls is not unreasonable, the transmigration is. That we shall pass hereafter into many states of successive existence is credible enough; but not upon earth, not with earthly passions. Yet Pythagoras was so resolute series of lives here among men, by the peculiar and so unguarded, that he asserted to himself a and especial favour of the Gods, with a perfect consciousness of every change he had undergone. Others became dogs, wolves, bears, or peradven

ture men again; but knowing as little of what had happened. Nevertheless, he pretended that these transmigrations were punishments and rewards. Which is punished? the dead creature or the living? the criminal man or the guiltless animal? Some believe they can throw their sins into a fox: others (in Africa for instance) into a priest. Now the priest may have received what he esteems an equivalent: the fox is at once a creditor and a debtor, with little hope, on either side, of indemnity or balance. It is only when you or Pericles were my audience, that I ever was inclined to press hard against the inconsistencies of philosophers. But we must trace things to their origin where we can. The greater part of those now prevalent are ascribable to the school of Samos. Numerals were considered by the teacher as materials, and not only as the components, but as the elements, of the world. He misunderstood his own theory: the reason is, he made it his own by theft. The young persons who are hearers of the warier Socrates, catch at it in the playground, and the ill-compacted cake crumbles under their hands.

Unfavourable as my evidence must appear, and is, I am fortunate in being able to lay before you another and comelier representation of a philosopher so enriched by genius. I have always, in all companies, and upon all occasions, been sparing of my questions, and have exerted the uttermost ingenuity I am master of, in drawing the truth on, without such an instrument of torture. Probably I have lost by age a part of my dexterity, or presence of mind, or determination; for Proxenos, at the close of our conference, said aloud and sharply,

"You shall never make that out. I think him a very honest man; and I think nobody an honest man who thinks otherwise."

"Fair Proxenos!" I replied, "you are now greatly more than a philosopher. Some favourite God alone could have inspired all this enthusiasm. In the vigorous expression of that terse apothegm is there not somewhat more of the poet than of the Pythagorean?"

"I believe there may be" replied he, "I was always much given to poetry."

prove the identity of Pythagoras and Samotes. Strange, that the idea should have occurred to no one else in the course of many generations. Was it not sufficiently clear for the follower of truth? or was it not sufficiently dark and intricate for the lover of mystery and paradox? I imagine it stood between both, at an equal distance from the road of each, and thus it was past unnoticed.

There is nobody then who can explain to me what was the religion of the Gauls at the time of the Phocæan emigration. Samotes is recorded as their legislator. Legislation here includes, as it necessarily must in ages of barbarism, not only the civil institutions of the people, but likewise the religious, Yet neither the character nor the tenets, neither the period nor the country, nor indeed the existence of Samotes, have ever been ascertained. Ask the people who he was, and they will tell you that he came to them over the sea, long ago. Computation of time, past and future, never occupies, never occurs to, the barbarian. It was long ago that the old tree, against which his cabin leans, sprang up; long ago since the cabin was built; long ago since he was a child. Whatever is not visible to him, or was not, has feeble hold on his memory, and never enters into his calculation. As lawgiver of the Gauls, Samotes is acknowledged to have instructed them both in the ceremony of human oblations and in the creed of the metempsychosis; for these are mentioned together in the first opening of their history. But it appears to me that the metempsychosis, which is generally held as the basis of druidism, is adventitious. We shall find that this institution is composed of two extremely different and obstinately discordant parts. One, the result of ferocity, varies but little from what exists in the early state of most nations; which diversity may be accounted for, from their climate, their wants, their habits, and pursuits. The other is engrafted on its savage stock, by the steady but not sufficiently impressive hand of a gentle and provident philosophy. You ask me when? by whom? One word will solve both questions: by Samotes; by the man of Samos. Do you doubt that he ever was in Gaul? And do you think it probable that, with his fondness for travelling, his alacrity in inquiry, he would have resided many years in Italy, and have never once visited a

He grew instantly calm upon my compliment, and said with the most polite complacency, "Well! I am not a match for you Half-Athe-country so near to him, a country so singular in nians; but read this little volume by my friend Psyllos of Metaponton; it will open your eyes, I warrant it."

"Blessings upon it then!" said I, bending over and taking it with due reverence; "many of late have done quite the contrary."

CLXXXI. PSYLLOS TO PISANDER OF ELEA. On the Lawgiver of the Gauls, forwarded to CLEONE. "Pisander! when last we met, I promised you I would make farther inquiries into the subject of our conversation at the house of Euryalos, and that I doubted not of success in attempting to

its customs, at least in the combination of them, if such customs then existed, a country on whose shores the most valiant of his own countrymen were landing? If at this early epoch the tribes of Gaul believed in the metempsychosis, would not sympathy, would not admiration, have impelled him thither? But if, on the contrary, the doctrine did not prevail, who introduced it? what author of greater weight? I am curious to learn his name or his country. Perhaps by knowing the one, we may guess the other, since the ideas he impressed and left behind him are stamped with a peculiar mark. It may be argued that, able to inculcate lastingly on the mind of his

mentioned his voyage to India* nor have omitted his voyage to Gaul. The priests on the Nile were at all times well acquainted with their brethren on the Indus and Ganges; and indeed I believe that all the great temples of the world have secret communications. Do not lift up your hands, my good Pisander! not underground, not magical, but opened from time to time, in cases of difficulty and danger, through confidential agents.+

All religions, in which there is no craft nor cruelty, are pleasing to the immortal Gods; because all acknowledge their power, invoke their presence, exhibit our dependence, and exhort our gratitude. Therefore let us never be remiss in our duty of veneration to those holy men, who not only manifest their good-will toward such as think and worship with them, but also toward the stranger at the steps of other altars. While orators and poets, and philosophers too, are riotous and quarrelsome, malicious and vindictive, Religion leads to herself, and calls her own, the priests of all persuasions, who extend their hands one to another from a distance, unrestricted by jealousy and undefiled by blood.

Gallic proselytes, a dogma which seems to have of its impurity, they had carefully traced and been received but partially, and to have soon pointed out his travels, they would neither have disappeared, where he lived in the full exercise of authority, he still was unable to abolish, as he would wish to do, their sanguinary rites. He was for it is easier to learn than to unlearn what incessantly works and excites and agitates our passions. The advantages of the metempsychosis were perhaps the most striking of any that could be presented to warlike minds; to which minds, you must have remarked, O Pisander, advantages will present themselves more readily than disadvantages. Beside, the Druids, whom we can not well consider at any time a very enlightened order, or likely to see every consequence, every contingency, had no direct interest in suppressing such a doctrine. New colonies were endeavouring to establish themselves in their country; and colonies are the unfailing seed of wars. For, if they flourish, they require an accession of territory; if they do not flourish, they either turn into vagabonds and robbers, or employ violence to remove the obstacles that impede their industry. Something great then and something new was wanting, since the danger that impended was both new and great. Immolations before them on one side, and the sublime view of the metempsychosis on the other, what could either shake the confidence or abate the courage of the Gauls? A new body was new armour, beautiful, strong, in which they would elude the rage and laugh at the impotence of War. It was delightful to try other scenes of existence, to extinguish their burning wounds in the blood of their enemies, and to mount from the shields of their comrades into fresh life and glory. A religion thus compounded is absurd and contradictory, but contradiction and absurdity in religion are not peculiar to barbarians. The sacrifice of a human victim was deemed the most solemn and important duty, and they would rather abandon any other ceremony than this. They were savage; we are civilised: they fought, and their adversaries were to share their immortality; we fight to make others as abject as ourselves. They had leaders of proud spirit who raised them to the heavens: we have heavy oligarchs who bend us to the earth.

Rituals, in even the less ardent and intractable, are not soon, nor easily, nor all at once, resigned. We must cease then to marvel that the most impressive, the most awful, and perhaps the most universal of devotions, human sacrifice, should not have been overthrown by the declining years of Pythagoras. It is true he retained his faculties to the last; he retained also the energy of his mind; but the voluntary exile of Samos was purely a lawgiver in philosophy. His religion was not intolerant nor intrusive, but mainly adapted to the humbler offices of temperance and peace. Beyond this, little is known and much is feigned of him. It would have been well if historians had related to us more of what he did, and less of what he did not. If, instead of the story of his dying in a bean-field, through horror

How great, O my friend, is our consolation, in the certainty that our prayers and sacrifices are accepted! so long as the priests in our country and around us live fraternally, let us likewise be of the household. But if any devastating religion should spring up, any which rouses strife and spreads distrust, any which sunders man from man, that religion must be rejected by the Gods as wicked, and renounced by their worshippers as ineffectual. The claimants of such an imposition shall never have from me white flour or salt. Should you question why the milder creed had little effect in Gaul,-why the golden rules are not valued by the people as the precious relics of a departed master, I reply that in such a state of society it was impossible to bring them bodily! into use. The priests alone (and it is not every priest who will readily sit down to be instructed) could profit by his knowledge of geometry, or would apply to practice or speculation his theory of numbers. A few of them are not utterly ignorant of either; and it is hence that the trickling may be traced. Men living in a state of barbarism and warfare would entertain but small respect for injunctions to abstain from any obvious and palatable food. Silence, forbearance, quietude, it can not be expected should be the inmates of a camp. Soldiers without regular supplies (in

accompanied Alexander would have inquired after him, * If Pythagoras had visited India, the learned men who and would have given the result.

†The use of gunpowder, for instance, if not of guns, was known to the priests in countries the most distant, and of the most different religions. The army of the Mace

donians was smitten by its lightnings under the walls of the Oxydracians; the Gauls, and afterward the Persians, under the temple of Delphi.