MUSIC. As it raised the mind above the dominion of passion, it was considered as the most proper exercise to fit the mind for contemplation. Pythagoras considered music not only as an art, to be judged of by the ear, but as a science to be reduced to mathematical maxims and relations, and allied to astronomy. He believed that the heavenly spheres, in which the planets move, dividing the ether in their course, produced tones, and that the tones must be different according to their size, velocity, and distance. That these relations were in concord, that these tones produced the most perfect harmony, he necessarily believed, in consequence of his notions of the supreme perfection of the universe. Here we have that sublime conception of the music of the spheres, so poetical, so lofty, and so beautiful! To the initiate of the Pythagorean Mysteries, the universe overflowed with melody and song! The whole system of worlds swam in a celestial harmony. Around the central Throne, where He, the All-beautiful and Mighty, sits in unspeakable majesty, hidden from mortal eyes by the golden drapery of innumerable suns and stars, swells, from age to age, this ineffable chorus of the spheres. In the midst of such contemplations was the mind of the Pythagorean disciple exalted and refined. To him— "The earth and sea, those orbs of fire,

Which sweep the clear serene along,
Were parts of one stupendous lyre,

That wrapped the worlds in mighty song."

ASTRONOMY.-The astronomical idea of the Pythagorean Mysteries was, that heaven denotes either the spheres of the fixed stars, or the whole space between the fixed stars and the moon, or the whole world, including both the heavenly spheres and the earth. Agreeably to the arithmetical hypothesis, there are ten heavenly spheres, of which nine are visible to us, viz: the sphere of the fixed stars; the seven spheres of the seven planets, including the sun and moon; and the sphere of the earth. The tenth earth, called by Pythagoras anticthon-antiearth is invisible, but necessary to the perfection of the harmony of nature, since the decad is the perfection of the numerical harmony. By this antiearth, he explains the eclipses of the moon. In the middle of the universe is the central fire, the principle of warmth and life. The earth is one of the planets moving around the sphere of fire. The atmosphere of the earth is a gross immovable mass, but the ether is pure, clear, always in motion, and the region of all the Divine and immortal natures. His moon and stars are Divine intelligences, or inhabited by such.

OF PHILOSOPHY.-The Pythagorean Mysteries taught that true knowledge embraced those subjects which are in their nature immutable, eternal, and indestructible, and of which alone it can be properly predicated that they exist. The object of

philosophy is, by contemplation, to render the human mind similar to the Divine, and make it fit to enter the assembly of superior and purer intelligences. For this purpose it is necessary to invoke, in prayer, the assistance of the Divinity and of good angels. Contemplative wisdom cannot be fully attained without entire abstraction from common things without entire tranquillity and freedom of mind. Hence the necessity of societies, separate from the world, for contemplation and study.*

OF GOD.-Pythagoras taught that God was a universal spirit, diffused in all directions from the centre, the source of all animal life, the actual and inward cause of all motion; in substance similar to light-the first principle of the universe, incapable of suffering, invisible, indestructible, and to be comprehended by the mind alone. To the Deity, there were three kinds of subordinate intelligencesgods, demons, and heroes-emanations from the Supreme God, varying in dignity and perfection, in proportion as they were more or less removed from their source. The heroes he believed to be clothed with bodies of subtle matter.

As God is one, and the origin of all variety, he was represented as a monad, and the subordinate spirits as number, derived from and contained in

*This Pythagorean idea seems to have been perpetuated and practised on by the Romish church, in its monastic system.

unity. In the organization of his secret society, this idea was displayed. The regions of the air he thought filled with spirits, demons, and heroes, who were the cause of health or sickness to men and animals, and by means of dreams and other kinds of divinations, imparted the knowledge of future events. The soul was likewise a number, an emanation of the central fire, and consequently always in motion and indestructible.

OF MAN. In the mystic science of Pythagoras, man consisted of an elementary nature, of a divine and rational principle. His soul was a self-moving power, and consisted of two parts-the rational, which was a portion of the universal soul, an emanation of the central fire, and had its seat in the brain, and irrational, which comprised the passions, and lived in the heart. The sensitive soul (thumos) was supposed to perish; but the rational mind (phrenes, nous) was believed to be immortal, because it had its origin in an immortal source. When the latter was freed from the fetters of the body, it assumed an ethereal vehicle, and passed to the habitations of the dead, where it remained till it returned to the world, to dwell in some other body.* This transmigration of the spirit was continued, until it was purified of all taint of sin, when it was received.

* Pythagoraischen Philosophie (Hamburg, 1826); et Bökh's Disputat. de Platonico Systemate Cælest. Glob., &c. (Heidelburg, 1810, 4to.)

to everlasting beatitude in the bosom of Him from whom it proceeded.

Such was the sublime and lofty character of that ancient system of Freemasonry-if we may call it so-which was so celebrated in the ancient world, and exercised so mighty an influence on subsequent ages. It had its errors, both in its organization and the ideas it sought to propagate, yet its results were eminently advantageous to the human race. Many of its teachings were profoundly philosophical, and are accepted by the most critical systems of the present age. Its idea of association around the secret principle, for mutual aid, social enjoyment, intellectual culture, is still the ideal of earnest positive spirits, who believe in the everlasting progress of the race, and look forward, with a sublime hope, to "a good time coming."