THOUGHTS FROM PYTHAGORAS

Abstract

THE philosopher who turns his attention to music finds that his thought may take flight in two directions. He may, first of all, attempt to give an account of what music is in itself and what its effect is upon human nature. This is the inward side of musical philosophy; but if he is presumptuous enough to be satisfied with what he is able to surmise in this way or despairful enough to abandon further attempt, there remains for him an outward side to study. This outward side consists of the relation that music bears to philosophy as a whole or, if it be objected that there is no such thing as philosophy as a whole, then to philosophic ideas at large. If his thoughts proceed in this direction, they must encounter some such question as What importance has music as an element of the universe ? . As for his answer, it is not made any more easy to frame by the fact that the majority of eminent philosophers have attached little or no importance to music. Even Plato, who recognizes the high educational value of music, makes no attempt to relate it to ultimate reality. It is true that in relating the Myth of Er he introduces the celebrated doctrine of the Harmony of the Spheres, but this is made a mere incident in his statement on the Immortality of the Soul and it evidently fails to hold his interest. Our philosopher, however, is not without consolation. Around this idea of the Harmony of the Spheres there clusters a tradition which, if it be but a minor one, has for music some impressive claims to make. This tradition, it is true, is not very coherent, but it may yet become so. Its threads are scattered, but they may yet be gathered up. It is a tradition which is as much the province of poets as of accredited philosophers, but which, nevertheless, has behind it a force of intuition which ensures its survival after each recurring age of rationalism. When it develops, the philosopher is bound to remark, it has a surprising way of doing so by leaps and bounds, but its origin is not merely ancient but venerable. To begin at the beginning is to return to the source of so very much that is mysterious and valuable in the world of ideas; to return, that is, to Pythagoras. In that legendary sage the learned satirists of ancient and modern times have found a favourite object of exercise. No doubt that is not precisely the kind of immortality he would have welcomed, nor is it his just reward. What brought it upon him was his innocence as to the sobering effect which rationalistic modes of thought have upon philosophy, though indeed it was he who put system into the nebulous notions that prevailed in the Orphic cult. He would have agreed with Montaigne that philosophy is but sophisticated poetry, and not felt that the connection was a damaging 'one. Other thinkers have been pleased to ally philosophy with science or logic, but philosophy has never been more than half made up of these quantities. The other half of philosophy consists of spontaneous ideas, which often can neither be proved nor disproved, and of this creative side of philosophy Pythagoras is surely the prophet, so that he remains, as he was in his own day, at the centre of the philosophic storm. Indeed a man who can project his influence over 2,500 years without leaving a written record of his teaching, and without having more than a few of his sayings recorded for him, belongs to a very select gallery of human genius. Such an effect was possible only