Les questions académiques, le traité Des termes extrêmes des biens et des maux, et les Tusculanes

stars and the moon he called κόσμος; the space between the moon and the earth οὐρανός. He, or at least his disciples, taught that the earth revolved on its axis, (though Philolaus taught that its revolutions were not round its axis but round the central fire). The universe itself they considered as a large sphere, and the intervals between the heavenly bodies they thought were determined according to the laws and relations of musical harmony. And from this theory arose the doctrine of the Music of the Spheres; as the heavenly bodies in their motion occasioned a sort of sound depending on their distances and velocities; and as these were determined by the laws of harmonic intervals, the sounds, or notes, formed a regular musical scale. The light and heat of the central fire he believed that we received through the sun, which he considered a kind of lens: and perfection, he conceived to exist in direct ratio to the distance from the central fire. The universe, itself, they looked upon as having subsisted from all eternity, controlled by an eternal supreme Deity; who established both limits and infinity; and whom they often speak of as the absolute μονὰς, or unity. He pervaded (though he was distinct from) and presided over the universe. Sometimes, too, he is called the absolute _Good_,—while the origin of evil is attributed not to him, but to matter which prevented him from conducting everything to the best end. With respect to man, the doctrine of Pythagoras was that known by the name of the Metempsychosis,—that the soul after death rested a certain time till it was purified, and had acquired a forgetfulness of what had previously happened to it; and then reanimated some other body. The ethics of the Pythagoreans consisted more in ascetic practice and maxims for the restraint of the passions, than in any scientific theories.…