The Pythagorean Method of Learning

How did Pythagoras teach his students?

1. First, he tested them if they were able to refrain from speaking. He surveyed whether they could conceal in silence and preserve what they had learnt and heard.

2. Second, he observed whether they were modest.

He was much more anxious that they should be silent than that they should speak. He likewise directed his attention to every other particular; such, as whether they were astonished by the energies of any immoderate passion or desire.

Nor did he in a superficial manner consider how they were affected with respect to anger or desire, or whether they were contentious or ambitious, or how they were disposed with reference to friendship or strife.

And if on his surveying all these particulars accurately, they appeared to him to be endued with worthy manners, then he directed his attention to their facility in learning and their memory.

In the first place, he considered whether they were able to follow what was said, with rapidity and perspicuity.

In the next place, whether a certain love and temperance attended them towards the disciplines which they were taught.

For he surveyed how they were naturally disposed with respect to gentleness. But he called this catartysis, i. e. elegance of manners.

And he considered ferocity as hostile to such a mode of education. For impudence, shamelessness, intemperance, slothfulness, slowness in learning, unrestrained licentiousness, disgrace, and the like, are the attendants on savage manners; but the contraries on gentleness and mildness. He considered these things, therefore, in making trial of those that came to him, and in these he exercised the learners. And those that were adapted to receive the goods of the wisdom he possessed, he admitted to be his disciples, and thus endeavoured to elevate them to scientific knowledge.

But if he perceived that any one of them was unadapted, he expelled him as one of another tribe, and a stranger.

His students performed their morning walks alone, and in places in which there happened to be an appropriate solitude and quiet, and where there were temples and groves, and other things adapted to give delight.

They thought it improper to converse with anyone, till they had rendered their own soul sedate, and had co-harmonised the reasoning power.

For they apprehended it to be a thing of a turbulent nature to mingle in a crowd as soon as they rose from bed. On this account all the Pythagoreans always selected for themselves the most sacred places. But after their morning walk they associated with each other, and especially in temples, or if this was not possible, in places that resembled them. This time, likewise, they employed in the discussion of doctrines and disciplines, and in the correction of their manners.