They
were required to practise the greatest purity and simplicity of
manners. The first lesson they learned was SILENCE; for a time
they were required to be only hearers. "He [Pythagoras] said so"
(Ipse dixit), was to be held by them as sufficient, without any
proof. It was only the advanced pupils, after years of patient
submission, who were allowed to ask questions and to state
objections.
Pythagoras considered NUMBERS as the essence and principle of all
things, and attributed to them a real and distinct existence; so
that, in his view, they were the elements out of which the
universe was constructed. How he conceived this process has never
been satisfactorily explained. He traced the various forms and
phenomena of the world to numbers as their basis and essence. The
"Monad" or unit he regarded as the source of all numbers. The
number Two was imperfect, and the cause of increase and division.
Three was called the number of the whole because it had a
beginning, middle, and end. Four, representing the square, is in
the highest degree perfect; and Ten, as it contains the sum of the
four prime numbers, comprehends all musical and arithmetical
proportions, and denotes the system of the world.
As the numbers proceed from the monad, so he regarded the pure and
simple essence of the Deity as the source of all the forms of
nature.
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