Therefore,
if the love of kindred is not extinct in your bosoms, forbear, I
entreat you, to violate the life of those who may haply be your
own relatives."
Shakspeare, in the "Merchant of Venice," makes Gratiano allude to
the metempsychosis, where he says to Shylock:
"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf; who hanged for human slaughter
Infused his soul in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous."
The relation of the notes of the musical scale to numbers, whereby
harmony results from vibrations in equal times, and discord from
the reverse, led Pythagoras to apply the word "harmony" to the
visible creation, meaning by it the just adaptation of parts to
each other. This is the idea which Dryden expresses in the
beginning of his "Song for St. Cecilia's Day":
"From harmony, from heavenly harmony
This everlasting frame began;
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The Diapason closing full in Man."
In the centre of the universe (he taught) there was a central
fire, the principle of life. The central fire was surrounded by
the earth, the moon, the sun, and the five planets.
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