Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources Read Online Free Page B

that, “A man must be made good, then a god.” In the order of ascent, the attainment is first made by achieving in daily life, from hence, under instruction, one comes gradually to comprehend, and then to resemble the Divine. He concluded that, most important of all, a man must inform his soul concerning what is good and what is ill, for one is good only when he knows and practices the good. Everyone is destined eventually to know universals, not with the physical eye, but by intellectual and intuitive insight. Then, as The Golden Verses say, man stripped of flesh is freed to higher ether: “A deathless God divine, mortal no more.”
    The Master maintained that philosophy has to do with real things. He means real essences, incorporeal and eternal realities. All other things are what they are by participating in these realities. Such is the nature of material things, which are corruptible. Science, he points out, has to do with corporeals and not with essentials, and the knowledge of particulars must always follow the science of essentials, or universals. In consciousness, he who understands universals will also understand particulars, but not the reverse.
    Pythagoras was practical with his philosophy, for he held it to be in vain if incapable of curing man's passions. As medicine cures the body, there is no benefit in philosophy unless it expels the diseases of the soul. What then are the anchors, the helpers, of the soul? He answers: Wisdom, Magnanimity, and Fortitude, for the virtues are solid, the rest are trifles.
    Progress at the Academy actually amounted to a series of initiations. The most significant phase of instruction concerned the fundamental concept that number is the essence of things—that everything is essentially number. Authorities disagree as to how this concept is to be understood. Aristotle's opinion is that the two ways of viewing numbers namely as primal essences, or as the symbols of existence, do not exclude one another. The principle explanation maintains that numbers are the Form, the very essence and meaning of things, and do not exist apart from things. Number per se was presented as the quality of things, as the substance and law which holds the universe together. So powerful was this concept that it was further stated that number rules over gods and men and are therefore, the condition and definition of knowledge.
    All numbers are divisible into either Odd, or Even, which are the universal constituents of numbers and of things. A third class was accepted, namely, the Odd-Even. The Odd was identified with the Limited, while the Even was associated with the Unlimited. All things partake of the Limited and the Unlimited, the Limited to be equated with the perfect, and the Unlimited with the imperfect. In addition to these opposites, there were the One and Many, Right and Left, Masculine and Feminine, Rest and Motion, Straight and Crooked, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Square and Oblong. Certain meanings were also assigned to each of these categories. The Pythagoreans felt it to be observable that each thing contains within itself these opposite characteristics.
    Regarding first principles, Pythagoras taught that from the opposition of Unity and Duality, other opposites may be deduced, such as: Spiritual and Corporeal, Form and Substance, and Deity and Matter, which is itself derived from Deity as the original Unity. Unity is the condition of all beginning, and from it arose infinite Duality. Unity and Duality produced numbers and, from these, points, and other mathematical and geometrical forms. Unity is the efficient or moving cause of things. Duality is fundamental matter out of which, when impressed by Unity, creation is produced. The Neo-Pythagoreans regarded Unity as the One and correlated it with Deity, a formless Form lying beyond all opposites as the cause of causes. Duality is to be identified with diversity, as the fragmentor of Being.
    The opposites are held together by Harmony,