We shall now first consider Greece, the country showing an almost total autonomy in the field of philosophy. A modern historian[1] has summed up this fact in a striking, although perhaps somewhat exaggerated way:
It was a small people that was destined to create the principle of progress, namely the Greeks. Apart from the blind forces of nature, there is nothing moving in the universe which is not of Greek origin.
However, even if we fully accept the cultural supremacy of the Hellenes, particularly in the creation of philosophy as we know it today, we are certainly entitled to make some kind of objection: they most assuredly took over some considerable material accumulated by other peoples. One thing, for sure, they have not invented themselves: the theory of a soul clearly distinguishable from the body, and even able to leave that "sombre prison" at the moment of death.
The Pythagorean conception of the human soul bears the obvious imprint of its Oriental origin. The dualist views of Pythagoras may be traced back to Orphism, and for a considerable part Orphism in Greece is of foreign origin. The traces from a Dionysius worship are clear enough here, and that worship finds its cradle in Tracia or Phrygia, rather than in Greece. To Southern Italy and Sicily the Ionians had come from Asia Minor. And Pythagoras has inherited much of his theories about the soul, as the true substance of immortality, from the Orphic communities. His ideas of a transmigration of souls, of a relationship between men and animals, and the involved necessity of abstaining from meat--all this, as we know, is still found in India. Traditions tell us that Pythagoras visited both Egypt and Babylonia. He had communicated with the Persian magicians, the heirs of Zoroaster.
"All of early Greek philosophy, all this magnificent blossoming, would not have existed if Greek thought had not sunk its roots in the deep soul of the Orient." Charles Werner.[2]
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