[37]i. e. Futurity is long; Pythagoras signifying by this, that those who do not take an oath religiously, will be punished in some future period, if they are not at present.
[38]i. e. From the time in which the Gods are fabulously said to have reigned in Egypt.
[39]I wonder that the learned Obrechtus should translate ηβηδον, _cum omni juventute sua_. Had his translation, which is on the whole very excellent, been reviewed by English or Scotch critics, they would have immediately said from this circumstance, that he did not understand Greek.
[40]Iamblichus here alludes to a right-angled triangle, and the Pythagoric theorem of 47. 1 of Euclid. For the square described on the longest side is equal to the two squares described on the two other sides. The longest side therefore is said by geometricians to be equal in power to the powers of the other sides. This however Kiessling not understanding, says, “that power is the space contained between the concurring lines of figures, and is the area of the triangle.” “Δυναμις idem est, quod εμβαδον, spatium, quod infra concurrentes lineas figurarum continetur, area trigoni.” But Kiessling, though a good verbalist, is a bad geometrician, and no philosopher.
[41]In the original δεκατον _the tenth month_; but as it very seldom happens that a woman is in a state of pregnancy more than nine months, it appears to me that for δεκατον we should read εκτον _the sixth month_, as in the above translation.
[42]Obrechtus by translating περι δε δοξης in this place, “De fama et gloria,” has evidently mistaken the meaning of Iamblichus.
[43]The wise and magnanimous Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics and Stoics, among the ancients, looked to virtue as its own reward, and performed what is right, because it is right to do so. And though they firmly believed in the immortality of the soul, their conduct was not at all influenced by the hope of future reward. This great truth indeed, that virtue brings with it its own recompense, is almost at present obsolete; and it is no unusual thing to hear a man, when afflicted, exclaiming with Methodistical cant,
“The many troubles that I meet, In getting to a Mercy-seat!”
[44]These energies are called beneficent, because they are of a purifying character. Hence Plato in the Timæus says, that a deluge is the consequence of the Gods _purifying_ the earth by water.