European Philosophy. BY SAMUEL NEIL, Author of The Art of Reasoning," "Elements of Rhetoric," &c. "THE divine significance of life" has in all ages attracted the attention of Time's noblest children. Is it a game or a warfare? If either, what is the stake at issue-and how is the triumph to be won? What a net-work of sympathy, feeling, passion, thought, action, and suffering is woven together into the web of human existence! Surely for no purpose other than a serious one have so many energies, anxieties, affections, hopes, fears, and intellectual faculties been massed together in man! "We do think The soul was never put into the body- To what end, then, is this soul-life given? An answer to that query, whatsoever its nature may be, will constitute a philosophy of morals, provided that answer is reasoned, not dogmatic. Some solutions of this intricate problem have floated hazily before the conceptions of men, and have been the basis of law as well as the seed-thoughts of fable and poetry. In Greece alone was the attempt made to establish and confirm a doctrine regarding the purposes and duties of human life, by bringing into one the feelings and traditions of men, and subjecting them to the refining processes of the Reason. The earliest systematic, logically coherent, system of morals we owe, so far as we know, to Pythagoras. He, first among the early searchers for wisdom, "Treading the steps of common life with eyes posited the thought that men were living souls, bound to each other by a common destiny, that destiny to struggle out of the prison-house of life and the bonds of passion into pure, free infinity, from which life had its source. To him we are indebted for imparting a grandeur to human existence, by representing it to the mind as a scene in which noble and heroic work had been given man to do; for laying before society, as its chief end, and the consummation of its perfectness, the stimulation of the intellect and will, and, through them, of the whole powers of humanity, to resist the blossoming of sin in the soul, and to strive for the attainment of a purer life. Not only so, but he, with boldness of design, decision of character, and grandeur of administrative talent, exemplified in his life the theory he taught. We have already attempted to outline his ideas, and to draw up a sketch of the chief doctrines of which he was the propounder. A part only of our design has as yet been accomplished. Ingens iterabimus æquor -“We shall sail again on the great ocean of his thoughts. 46 The Pythagoric Monad is one, In that, as in a germ, all that exists, has existed, or may exist, is implicitly contained. It is the even-odd (aprio-épíσoog), which holds in its own essence all the elements and constituents of being, spiritual or material. Creation is the result of the collision and subsequent disentanglement of the finite and the infinite; and the perpetual development and reabsorption of the former from and into the latter forms the life of the universe. The Divinity is then not only the origin, but also the very soul of all-the creative, harmonizing, regulating, yet indiscernible Existence from which the AÏÍ germinated, as well as the interpenetrant and permeating spirit of the All. It is, therefore, both Spirit and Matter. Matter, detaching itself from Spirit, becomes the Dyad; and so much of spiritual being as is incorporated with and enveloped in matter, at the period of evolution, is therewith hurried into the very midst of imperfection, divisibility, and unrest. It becomes then, like that in which its life-manifestation is produced, mutable, multiple, and transitory. All that is changeful, imperfect, and migratory, is illusive and false-unreal. The spirit, imprisoned in this wilderness of unreality, is the victim of continuous deception, until he learns, through the variabilities around him, the grand eternal invariabilities of which they are the evolutions, until in phenomena he can detect noumena, and exchange an acquaintance with the facts of experience for a knowledge of the laws of science. There are of course affinities of spirit, which should attract man towards the Monad; but there are also the changeful joys of material being to occupy attention, and attract, or rather distract, the soul. When the intelligence, strong in its affinity with the spiritual source, whence it was hurried, breaks the bonds of the variable, i. e., the existence in which experience is the sole guide, and takes upon itself the strict bondage of scientific thought, it is ready for reabsorption into the Monad, for being taken again into the bosom of the Deific. Science has for its grand object the reduction of the multiplex into the unical. Of all sciences, those which treat of quantity and form as they concern themselves with the inevitable relations of material things-are the centre and start-point. Upwards from these the mind reaches to the one chief source of being the summit-point of science-the Monad. Thus is the intelligence redeemed from the thraldom of sense-seeming, and enabled to behold the ultimate reality of the Many and the All. But man is more than intelligent: he is an agent of whom good and evil may be predicated, and from whom good or evil results chiefly flow. In imitation of the divine Monad, each spiritual being seeks to concentre itself into one. This tendency towards self-centrement educes in each the feeling of personality, at the very basis and root of which is the will. The will, in its personal manifestation, may resign itself to the stream of circumstances in which it finds itself, and glide adown its current, receiving its highest joys from the transient and illusive, if not delusive, sensations which the multiple impresses upon it; or it may, with noble bravery, resist the delicious charming of Circean pleasures. Hence the need of abstinence, moderation, and meditative fasting, that the dominion of the material may be weakened, and the power of the intelligence, covenanting with that of the personal will, may work together for the emancipation" a consummation devoutly to be wished "of the soul from the Dyadic state. Not all at once, however, can this result be accomplished; for by bands, numerous, strong, and well fastened around it, is the soul enslaved-habits retain their irksome enchainment, and pleasure flatters with continual promises of good to come; so that deliverance must be gradual-not by one brilliant stroke of exquisitely tempered resolution, but by the persistent effort of sustained, though often tried, willingness to be free. It may be, too, that the spirit has become so enwrapped with Dyadic swaddling-bands, has been so nursed in the luxurious lap of material dalliance, as to have lost, or, at least, to be in the process of losing, its primal affinity. To these a lesson of woe must be given. They must experience the hardness of the lot of those who sign their adhesion to the slavery in which the Dyad binds them. In these necessities the doctrine of Metempsychosis finds its reason. any The human mind, conscious of its own power, cannot assent to any doctrine which announces nihilism as its ultimate doom. Uninspired by any higher thought than that to which experience gives birth, it is incapable of conceiving for itself condition or mode of existence in which the laws of organization are inoperative, i. e., an incorporeal life. What, then, remains for the human soul, but to re-vesture itself in other bodies, and thus to stretch onward the life it feels to be imperishable? This, however, is but a first thought of the soul-a natural recoil against the idea of "shrinking into nought." Were there no more than this, life would be only an unending circle of differing births, modes of existence and deaths. Something besides the fortuitous transmission of being through other forms, viz., the progressive development of being-the moral perfectionment of the individual spirit-is the grand purpose of life. It is in consequence of this great thought that he so emphatically affirms the opinion so exquisitely expressed by the author of “ Philip Van Artevelde :" "Life never dies. Matter dies off it, and it lives elsewhere. * * The type is changed,- To say I live, says, I partake of that This great thought Pythagoras wedded to the Orphic and Egyptic conception of transmigration, and life was made worthier by the union. It was now no longer one link of an inevitable series of changes, having no refererence to the past or the future. It was a state of estrangement from the Divine Essence-an enslavement of the spirit, designed to expiate evil, to free from vice, to train to virtue, and to educate for a higher, nobler, and worthier life in the Infinite itself. Then only is the salvation of the soul complete, when, having undergone all needful transformations, it is reabsorbed into the Absolute Unity, and the power and dominion of the transient and multiplex is exchanged for incorporation into the eternal harmony of the Monad. All morality concentred in the intellect and the will. In their harmonic action the highest good was found, and the highest good was the highest truth. The true object of government, the proper aim of politics, is to realize the harmony of thought and will, and, in the state, as in each individual, to shadow forth the order and harmony of all things. In this thought originated the school at Crotona, of which he was the head. It is a signal mark of his wisdom, that he did not think that society was to be bettered by a revisal of its outward forms, or by the external pressure of new laws, but by the gradual diffusion of newer and nobler thoughts. The Crotoniate which he established was an association or order which combined in itself a school of science, a religious institution, and a political club. Its members were bound together by a vow, and by external symbols of union, such as dress, diet, ritual, &c. It consisted of the ablest men to be found in Crotona and the adjacent cities. Special care was taken to culture both the minds and hearts of his disciples, and to train them to be a genuine aristocracy. The government of Crotona was then vested in a council of one thousand of the heirs or representatives of the chief original proprietors and founders of the city. To train any considerable number of these to comprehend the true principles of government was no valueless contribution to the progress of humanity, as it was no slight boon to the states of Magna Græcia. The object of this association was to secure the ascendency of the wisest and the best-the supremacy in the councils of the state of the minds which were most thoroughly enlightened by philosophy, and most perfectly purified by moral training. It was, however, only a legislative training school, not an actively operative senatorial assembly. Its students were not the council of the thousand, but a voluntary congregation of such as desired to learn the true theory of politics, and the preferable practice of legislative power. Such as wished admission were subjected to an intellectual as well as a physiognomical examination by Pythagoras. Those who were accepted were subjected to a novitiate of silence for two years, during which time they were called (Acoustici) “hearers," and were compelled to submit to a most rigorous system of living, prescribed even to the minutest particulars of food, dress, conduct, &c., by the great master. After this, they received the name of (Mathematici)"disciples," and were allowed more freedom in living as well as in asking questions and proposing objections. In the last term of study they were initiated into the opinions of their tutor upon the all-important topics of philosophy, morals, and religion. The members dwelt together in the constant and rigorous exercise of their respective duties, under the direction of their intellectual chief, and were regularly trained to the practice of conscientious and righteous conduct towards each other. Besides the large number of members or disciples which constituted the school, and to whom the Esoteric or peculiar Pythagorean doctrines were taught, a large number received from him a general outline of his views, more adapted to the popular comprehension, and bearing the name of Exoteric instruction. In this confederate institution, so excellent in its aim, so lofty and pure in its design, so successful in its early years, what do we chiefly note? This: that true civilization consists in the harmony of our life with the condition in which it is to be passed -that the sun of human happiness depends on the training, the thoughts, and the doings of each-that the unseen, inner thought of man is the germ of all his external acts—and that harmony of intellect, will, and condition are, in the eternal covenant of nature, the only terms on which the stability and permanence of society can be secured-in other words, that the performance of duty was the only safeguard and bulwark of humanity. "Powers depart, Possessions vanish, and opinions change; |