Pythagoras was the first person who introduced measures and weights among the Greeks.  But it is his philosophy which chiefly claims our attention.  His main principle was that number is the essence of things,—­probably meaning by number order and harmony and conformity to law.  The order of the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom.  He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres.  Assuming that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws which are regular and harmonious in their operations.  Hence the necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe.  The Infinite of Anaximander became the One of Pythagoras.  He believed that the soul is incorporeal, and is put into the body subject to numerical and harmonical relation, and thus to divine regulation.  Hence the tendency of his speculations was to raise the soul to the contemplation of law and order,—­of a supreme Intelligence reigning in justice and truth.  Justice and truth became thus paramount virtues, to be practised and sought as the end of life.  “It is impossible not to see in these lofty speculations the effect of the Greek mind, according to its own genius, seeking after God, if haply it might find Him.”

We now approach the second stage of Greek philosophy.  The Ionic philosophers had sought to find the first principle of all things in the elements, and the Pythagoreans in number, or harmony and law, implying an intelligent creator.  The Eleatics, who now arose, went beyond the realm of physics to pure metaphysical inquiries, to an idealistic pantheism, which disregarded the sensible, maintaining that the source of truth is independent of the senses.  Here they were forestalled by the Hindu sages.

The founder of this school was Xenophanes, born in Colophon, an Ionian city of Asia Minor, from which being expelled he wandered over Sicily as a rhapsodist, or minstrel, reciting his elegiac poetry on the loftiest truths, and at last, about the year 536 B.C., came to Elea, where he settled.  The principal subject of his inquiries was deity itself,—­the great First Cause, the supreme Intelligence of the universe.  From the principle ex nihilo nihil fit he concluded that nothing could pass from non-existence to existence.  All things that exist are created by supreme Intelligence, who is eternal and immutable.  From this truth that God must be from all eternity, he advances to deny all multiplicity.  A plurality of gods is impossible.  With these sublime views,—­the unity and eternity and omnipotence of God,—­Xenophanes boldly attacked the popular errors of his day.  He denounced the transference to the deity of the human form; he inveighed against Homer and Hesiod; he ridiculed the doctrine of migration of souls.  Thus he sings,—­