Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

LECTUREXVIITHE FIRST RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISMIN THE NEOPYTHAGOREAN SCHOOLCiCERO, in a philosophic treatise written towards theend of his life, about fifty years before the Christianera, remarks that the Pythagorean philosophy mightbe said in his day to be extinct. Seneca, writing asit would seem in the year 64, the last before hisdeath, and that in which the great fire at Romeoccurred, followed by the first persecution of theChristians, expresses himself thus: " Who regardsphilosophy or any liberal study except when the gamesare interrupted, or a rainy day makes amusementnecessary ? Thus it is that so many philosophic familiesfail for want of an heir. The old and the youngAcademies have left no representative. Who is thereto communicate Pyrrho's tenets ? The Pythagoreanchool, disdainful of the multitude, finds no teacher.The new line of the Sextii, full of Roman vigour,after beginning with great force, was presently extinguished."Whatever allowance we make for the usual exaggerationof Seneca's language, heightened, as it mightbe conceived in this case, by his excessive regard forphilosophy, there is nothing remaining to show thatthis was not an accurate estimate of its condition, and1 Cicero, Timaus, i. ; Seneca. Nut. Quasi, vii. 32.114