Time and Pythagorean Religion

Author(s): M. F. Burnyeat
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Nov., 1962), pp. 248-251
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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TIME AND PYTHAGOREAN RELIGION
IT
is,
I
think,
a fair
presumption
to
suppose
that there was some bond
uniting
all the different
aspects
of
Pythagoras' thought,
a bond
strong enough
to
satisfy
Pythagoras
himself,
but loose
enough
for the
,LaOrqLta7-LKol
to be
able, later,
to
cast off the
religious
and
mystical
doctrines without
endangering
the rest.
If we
reject
Cornford's
suggestion
for the reconciliation of
Pythagorean religion
and
science, namely
that
they
were both based on the
concept
of
Unity,
the
One,
the obvious candidate is
simply
numbers in
general,
the
number-mysticism
which is common both in archaic Greece and in other
primitive
societies. I
suggest,
in
fact,
that Aristotle's words'
KaEl vayovc
O.
7ra V'rrva
El 70
rovftO
would,
in
Pythagoras' original teaching,
have
applied
to
religion
as well as to
science. We need
not,
of
course,
expect any very logical
connexion between
the two. Even without Aristotle's well-known
comment,2
it is clear that
Pythagoreanism
is full of
inconsistencies,
a
jumble
of different ideas which the
Master, inspired perhaps initially,
or confirmed
later,
by
his discoveries in
harmonics, gathered together
and
justified
as best he could in terms of numbers.
Indeed,
it seems to me that his
philosophy
is founded on a
mystical,
and
by
comparison
with other
Pre-Socratics,
irrational
basis,
and
not,
as Mr. Kirk
maintains,3
on a bold inference from the musical scale. K
v
Edt i'
7 v
TOy
&AELTE,
7rrpoveyyA'
ov-ro
-70iv
ovvapotuhvp
7rdal
v
alvots
elvat
7
v
spay/LaErlav.
Now we know that
Pythagorean
ethics were connected with
mathematics,
as we should
expect
from the Table of
Opposites, though
the details are not
very
clear. Cornford cites a
parallel
to the
equation
of
Justice
with four from
Mexico,
where the word for 'four' seems to be
closely
related to the
concept
of the Command or Rule of
Life,
'suggesting
wholeness,
perfection
or indefeasi-
bility'.4
But how the
Pythagoreans
avoided the conclusion that
Justice, being
an even
number,
is
evil,
we do not
know;
to
mystics illogicality
is
probably
of
no account.5 As for
politics,
we
might
be
justified
in
inferring
that
Archytas'
theory
of
political
cpCLovia
was held in some form
by Pythagoras himself,
especially
since
cdpCLovka
is the mark of an aristocratic state-not
equality,
but
proportion
in an
unequal
ratio-and the
opposition
to
Pythagorean
domina-
tion came from the democrats.6
But how are the main
religious
doctrines to be fitted into the numerical
hotch-potch?
These are stated
by Porphyry thus:'7
<bs
cW4varov ELval 'rg7c'
1
1vY
Pvxriv,7
Era
/cLE~afAovaavc
E a
E ls y cAa y El)
9cpAowv, Srpos
-oToVTLS 7TK KTa' 7TEPLOov~
rwg
volSvac'ov
ra"
7d 7E
VO/rLEVa.E
7at
c, V OtV ni
Et
KaA
E
8r' av-ra ra/
ywLvo/Eva EIvXa O/LOyEV)
8-ELF
VOLuECa. Oa'cL-ra yap
Els
)vg 'ErAAdca 7v `6a-
x Diels-Kranz,
Die
Fragmente
der Vorsokra-
tiker'o, 58B25.
2
D.-K.
58B4.
3
'Sense and Common Sense in the De-
velopment
of Greek
Philosophy', J.H.S.
lxxxi
(1961), 107-8.
4 From
Religion
to
Philosophy, p.
20o6
n. I
(Harper
Torchbook
edition, I957).
5 This situation often arises with
binary
taxonomies
(systems
of classification
where,
at each
level,
there are
only
two
opposed
categories-good
and
bad,
odd and even-
into one of which
everything
must be fitted
without
qualification).
In some
primitive
societies it is
argued 'quite logically'
that
justice
is evil
because, although
social order
is
good,
the
carrying
out of
justice
involves
the use of
force,
which in other contexts is
evil.
(I
owe this
point
to Dr. E. R.
Leach.)
6 See
J.
S.
Morrison, 'Pythagoras
of
Samos', C.Q.
N.s.
vi
(1956), 252-6.
7 D.-K.
14.
8 a.
TIME AND PYTHAGOREAN RELIGION
249
7TrpOTOS
Kotaa-L
77ta
tHvayo'pas.
Now with
the first
(transmigration
and the
immortality
of the
soul)
is connected the third
(the kinship
of all
living things),
and from that follow some of the rules of abstinence. So if we could connect the
first and the second
(repeated cycles
of
events)
with
numbers,
a lot of loose
ends would be tied
up.
Dr. E. R.
Leach,
in an
essay
in which he tries to discover
why
we include
under one
concept
two basic but different
experiences,
the
repetition
of certain
phenomena
in nature and the irreversible
process
of
ageing,
writes:'
'Indeed in some
primitive
societies it would seem that the time
process
is
not
experienced
as a "succession of
epochal
durations" at
all;
there is no
sense of
going
on and on in the same
direction,
or round and round the
same wheel. On the
contrary,
time is
experienced
as
something discontinuous,
a
repetition
of
repeated reversal,
a
sequence
of oscillations between
polar
opposites: night
and
day,
winter and
summer,
drought
and
flood, age
and
youth,
life and death. In such a scheme the
past
has no
"depth"
to
it,
all
past
is
equally past;
it is
simply
the
opposite
of now.
'It is
religion,
not common
sense,
that
persuades
men to include such
various
oppositions
under a
single category
such as time.
Night
and
day,
life and death are
logically
similar
pairs only
in the sense that
they
are both
pairs
of contraries. It is
religion
that identifies
them,
tricking
us into
thinking
of death as the
night
time of life and so
persuading
us that
non-repetitive
events are
really repetitive.2
'The notion that the time
process
is an oscillation between
opposites-
between
day
and
night
or between life and
death-implies
the existence of
a third
entity-the "thing"
that
oscillates,
the "I" that is at one moment in
the
daylight
and at another in the
dark,
the "soul" that is at one moment
in the
living body
and at another in the tomb. In this version of animistic
thinking
the
body
and the
grave
are
simply
alternative
temporary
residences
for the
life-essence,
the soul.
Plato,
in the
Phaedo,
actually
uses this
metaphor
explicitly:
he refers to the human
body
as the tomb of the soul
(psyche).
In death the soul
goes
from this world to the
underworld;
in birth it comes
back from the underworld to this world.
'This is of course a
very
common idea both in
primitive
and less
primitive
religious thinking.
The
point
that I want to stress is that this
type
of animism
involves a
particular conception
of the nature of time
and,
because of
this,
the
mythology
which
justifies
a belief in reincarnation is
also,
from another
angle,
a
mythological representation
of "time" itself.'
Here, then,
is a connexion between time and reincarnation. The obvious
objection
that the
Pythagoreans
did think of time as
going
'round and round the
same wheel' is
easily
met. A few sentences before the
passage quoted,
Dr. Leach
distinguishes primitive, unsophisticated thinking
from more modern notions of
time:
'Only
mathematicians are inclined to think of
repetition
as an
aspect
of
motion in a circle.'
Pythagoras might
well have taken reincarnation and
substituted
a circular
for the
oscillatory concept
of time which went with it.
(One
thinks of the
Ionian
philosophers
in this
connexion.)
An alternative
way
of
assuaging
the uncom-
fortable
psychological feelings
aroused
by ageing
and
entropy
is that taken
by
x
'Two
Essays concerning
the
Symbolic
Representation
of Time.
(i)
Cronus and
Chronos',
Rethinking Anthropology (1961),
pp. 126-7.
2
My
italics.
250
M. F. BURNYEAT
Parmenides,
to
deny
time
altogether,
and thus
deny
death. There
may not, in
practice,
be much difference between
thinking
of time in
oscillatory terms, and
thinking
of it as a
KVKAoS;
certainly
at a later date the circular notion was
as
common a cliche as it is to
us,
a
metaphor
with as much or as little
significance
as the
speaker may
wish to
imply.I
But to make the
jump
at so
early
a
date,
and,
above
all,
to
quantify
the
KV'KAS,
to
apply
arithmetic to the
cycle
and
its
periods,
is
surely
a
step
which a mathematician would be most
likely
to
take.
Now time is
expressible
in
numbers,
and the
Pythagoreans
did so
express
it.
Commenting
on Aristotle's remark that
opportunity
(KaLpdo)
was a
7r~v
apLOtLjv iraOoS,
Alexander
says
that
7
was the number for
KaLpds,
since
the
critical
stages
of a man's life went in
periods
of
7 (birth
at
7 months,
cutting
of
teeth at
7
months after
birth,
puberty
at
14, maturity
at
21),
and the sun
which
was the causal
agent responsible
for all such critical
periods
was the seventh
of the
heavenly bodies,
counting
towards the
centre.z
Aristotle also
says3
that
the seasons of the
year
were correlated with a certain kind of number
(the
square
number
4).
Ross in his note on the
passage
writes: 'There
may
also
be a reference to the
comparison,
ascribed
by
Aristides
Quintilianus (Musica,
3, P- 145 Meib.)
to
Pythagoras,
of the seasons to the
concords;
spring
is to
autumn the
fourth,
spring
to winter the
fifth,
spring
to summer the
octave,
so that the four seasons are to one another as
6, 8, 9,
12.' Not
only
do all these
events
repeat themselves,
each one
individually (Eudemus'
El
LS
IrTLTEVrELEC
ToS
I7vOayopEoLO, "aUE %TdAwV
T
%
alr7'
dp
OOIL),4
but the
very
numbers which
mark off each
stage
are themselves
repetitive: you
count
up
to ten and then
start
again
with
E"vKa.5
There is a number for the
soul,2 too,
the
'I'
that is
subject
to all these
experiences,
which studies in
Owplia
the
numerically-based
KdoUUOs
of
the universe to assimilate its
orderliness,
and which is
purged
in
KdOapols
by
the
numerically-expressed
harmonies of music. And it
undergoes
its
cycle
of reincarnations which is
again given
numerical
expression:
Herodotus
says
that its
7TEpL-4AvaUL
lasted
3,000 years,
in a
passage6
which is
agreed by
many
to include a reference to
Pythagoras,
whose own lives seem to have been
set out
by
later followers in a
fairly
detailed time-schedule based on the cube
of 6.7 To these details
may
be added the direct statement of Aristotle:8
ol'ov
Ecr7-L CS
TV WV
qAlov
opwV
c
pLpOLoS Kat
7,
K
tv
-U i
Vc7Aw
v
7 EAq7)V7)s9
KU
Tw~v ?cwwv
y~
EKaKrTOU
70V^
flov
K%
q"ALKIaS (animals,
of
course,
as well as human
beings
are residences for the
soul). Finally,
for what it is
worth,
there is the
theory
of
the soul held
by Alcmaeon,
who seems to have been in some sort of contact
with the
Pythagoreans.
The
soul,
he
thought,
is
immortal,
because it is
always
in
(circular)
motion like the
heavenly
bodies.9 Yet man dies because he cannot
join
the
beginning
to the
end;Io
the inference seems clear-the
body
can
only
traverse half the
circle,
and it is left to the soul to
complete
the
journey,
arriving eventually
for its next reincarnation at the
place
where the circle
began.
The connexion between time and
numbers,
though
obvious
enough
in
itself,
was of
particular importance
to the
Pythagoreans.
In the
fragment
of Aristotle
e.g.
Hdt.
I.
207. 2;
Eur.
Alc.
449;
P1.
Tim.
38
a.
2
See Ross ad Arist. Met. A
5.
985b3o.
3Met.
N 6.
Io93bl4.-
4 D.-K.
58B34.
s
D.-K.
58BI5-
6
D.-K.
I4.
I.
7
D.-K.
I4.
8.
8
D.-K.
58B27.
9
D.-K.
24AI2.
0o
D.-K.
24B2.
TIME AND PYTHAGOREAN RELIGION
251
preserved by
Stobaeus' we are told that the universe
(presumably
70
'rpC0rov
Iv is meant
here)
drew in from the
Unlimited,
inter
alia,
time. That
is,
time
only begins
when numbers
begin
and the count
starts,
I,
2, 3, 4
....
The time-
sequence
is
generated
as
part
of the same
process
as the
generation
of numbers
and the world.
Thus,
when Parmenides
rejects
the
generation
of the
world,
he
rejects
the
time-sequence
with it. Time
keeps
numbers
apart
in one
respect
as the void
keeps
them
apart
in another-it is
(according
to
Archytas
at
least)
Str7L-a7La
7rg
V
7
rV7 avr
W
ToE
and thus
closely
asssociated with the void in
several
passages, including
the Stobaeus one.z
But there seems to be no evidence that the
cosmogony
will ever be
repeated.
The
Pythagoreans
were
quite capable
of
restricting,
however
illogically,
the
periodic cycles
of events to events in our universe. The fact that the dissi-
dent
Hippasus
is said to have held
Xpo'vov <ptajdvov
ElVaL 7790
TOV
KO~7LOV
/LETafloAg,3
is
perhaps
a
good
reason for
accepting
Zeller's view that the cosmos
will never be
destroyed.
Or,
since we hear no more of the
periodic cycles,
an
original cyclical theory
of
cosmogonies might
have been
dropped by
the later
1LaO877tarKo,
together
with reincarnation and associated ideas.
If
my suggestion
is
right,
we have a
picture showing Pythagoras
to have been
a thinker as
irrationally systematic
as Heraclitus was
rationally systematic.
And such a
picture,
it seems to
me,
befits the
great
man that the founder of
such a
long-lived
school must have been.
King's College, Cambridge
M. F. BURNYEAT
I
D.-K.
58B30o.
2
Cf.
Ross's note on Arist.
Phys. 2I8a33.
3 D.-K.
x8.
I.