appears to have applied the principle of Intelligence to the domain of Ethics, as Anaxagoras had applied it to the realm of Physics, pointing out that there wanted three things to the perfection of human society—"to reason well, to speak well, and to do one's duty;" and that these three powers all spring from the directing influence of Intelligence. The author of the "Magna Moralia" says that Pythagoras was the first to discuss Virtue, and indicates in what manner the Pythagoreans attempted to apply their theory of Number to the sphere of Ethics. Their method was wrong, according to the "Magna Moralia," since there is a special and appropriate method for the analysis and discussion of the virtues, and "Justice is not a number evenly even."[1] Such a definition, thus crushed by way of a point-blank negative, has, of course, nothing but a metaphorical significance as applied to Ethics; but the metaphorical conception of Justice as a perfect number will not be totally devoid of inspiration to justice of conduct in the mind of one who loves perfection even when represented by an arithmetical abstraction; and if by this definition "it was designed to express the correspondence between action and suffering,"[2] a fruitful, though incomplete, ethical principle is embodied in
- ↑ Magna Moralia, i. 1, and i. 34. Cf. Aristotle: Eth. Nich., v. 5.—"The Pythagoreans defined the just to be simply retaliation—and Rhadamanthus (in Æschylus) appears to assert that justice is this: 'that the punishment will be equitable when a man suffers the same thing as he has done.'" (Thomas Taylor's translation of The Works of Aristotle.)
- ↑ Ueberweg, p. 47. See also citations in last note.
