era (cp. A. Lillie, Buddhism in Christendom and The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity; E. Bunsen, The Angel-Messiah; or, Buddhists, Essenes, and Christians--all three to be read with much caution) does not meet the case of the Pythagorean precedents for Essenism. Prof. Burnet (Early Greek Philos. 2nd ed. p. 102) notes close Indian parallels to Pythagoreanism, but overlooks the intermediate Persian parallels, and falls back very unnecessarily on the bald notion that "the two systems were independently evolved from the same primitive systems." As regards the mystic doctrine that numbers are, as it were, the moving principle in the cosmos--another thesis not unlikely to arise in that Babylonian world whence came the whole system of numbers for the later ancients [534]--we can but pronounce it a development of thought in vacuo, and look further for the source of Pythagorean influence in the moral and social code of the movement, in its science, in its pantheism, [535] its contradictory dualism, [536] and perhaps in its doctrine of transmigration of souls. On the side of natural science, its absurdities [537] point to the fatal lack of observation which so soon stopped progress in Greek physics and biology. [538] Yet in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and the science of sound the school seems to have done good scientific work; being indeed praised by the critical Aristotle for doing special service in that way. [539] It is recorded that Philolaos, the successor of Pythagoras, was the first to teach openly (about 460 B.C.) the doctrine of the motion of the earth [540]--which, however, as above noted, was also said to have been previously taught by Anaximandros [541] (from whom some incline to derive the Pythagorean theory of numbers in general [542]) and by Hiketas or Iketas (or Niketas) of Syracuse. [543] Ekphantos, of that city, is also credited with asserting the revolution of the earth on its axis; and he too is grouped with the Pythagoreans, though he seems to have had a pantheism of his own. [544] Philolaos in particular is said to have been prosecuted for his teaching, [545] which for many was a blasphemy; and it may be that this was the reason of its being specially ascribed to him, though current in the East long before his day. In the fragments ascribed to him is affirmed, in divergence from other Pythagoreans, the eternity of the earth; and in other ways he seems to have been an innovator. [546] In any case, the Pythagorean conception of the earth's motion was a speculative one, wide of the facts, and not identical with the modern doctrine, save insofar as Pythagoras--or Philolaos--had rightly conceived the earth as a sphere. [547]