The Mysteries were the basis of the society of Pythagoreans. Pythagoras of Samos was a remarkable man, who went to Italy and settled at Crotona. His sect is of double importance to us because in later times it developed a philosophy on its mathematical and astronomical sides. Pythagoras and his immediate following must be distinguished from the later Pythagoreans. Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans were not philosophers, but a sect like the Orphic society of Mysteries, yet the sect of Pythagoreans embraced much more in its scope. It tried to control the public and private life of its members and to evolve a common method of education.[7] Pythagoras was an exiled aristocrat, and his sect was an aristocratic religious body in reaction against the democratic excesses. The only doctrine upon which Pythagoras placed any emphasis was that of immortality in the form of metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul from one bodily form into another). The sect was dispersed as a religious body about 450 B. C. The scattered members formed a school of philosophy at Thebes until about 350 B. C. Of these later philosophical Pythagoreans and their number theory, we shall speak in the proper place. At the time of the dispersion of the Pythagoreans there existed no longer any peril from the new religion. The craze of the new religion was passing away. During the sixth century B. C. it was a great peril to the future intellectual life of Greece. Had it then gained a little more power it would probably have been admitted by the priesthood to the temples. In the exercise of such enormous sacerdotal power, the priests would have enslaved the Greek mind to superstition, and the priesthood in turn would have become an easy tool for tyrants. There would then have been no Socrates, no Plato, and no Aristotle. The Mysteries were a reaction toward asceticism as a religious salvation from the political peril, but they were, however, equally as great a peril to Greece. _The medium course along the line of a rational philosophy, which the Greek genius actually took, proved its salvation._ =Characteristics of the Cosmologists.= There are certain characteristics of this early philosophy that should be noted at the beginning. (1) All the Cosmologists were physical scientists, and with few exceptions their scientific views were noteworthy. Aristotle calls them physicists in distinction from their predecessors, whom he calls theologians.