Like a modern Virgil he leads us to the brink of the deepest chasms, and then abandons us to our own intuitions. Possibly he saw farther into the depths than he could record in human speech--and so wrote on from romance to romance in search of the expression that forever eluded his pen. LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF PYTHAGORAS: by F. S. Darrow, PH. D., A. M. I. LIFE Pythagoras, the pure philosopher deeply versed in the profounder phenomena of nature, the noble inheritor of the ancient lore, whose great aim was to free the soul from the fetters of sense and force it to realize its powers, must live eternally in human memory.--_H. P. Blavatsky_ This world-famous Greek teacher of "the Heart Doctrine" was born about 580 B. C. on the island of Samos and died about 500 B. C. Before his birth it was prophesied to his father that a son was about to be born to him who would be a great benefactor of mankind. Some even went so far as to declare that Pythagoras was a human incarnation of Hyperborean Apollo. It is related that when a mere youth he left his native city to begin a series of travels to the wise men of all countries, from the Hindûs and Arabs in the East, to the Druids of Gaul in the West. We are told that he spent twelve years in Babylon, conversing freely with the Magi, by whom he was instructed in all their Mysteries and taught the most perfect form of worship. He spent twenty-two years in Egypt as an intimate of the most learned hierophants, under whose tutelage he mastered the three styles of Egyptian writing, the common, the hieroglyphic, and the sacerdotal. He brought with him a personal letter of introduction to Amasis, the reigning Pharaoh, who forthwith wrote to the hierophants and requested them to initiate Pythagoras into their mysteries. Pythagoras first went to the priests of Heliopolis, but they, true to the inveterate Egyptian suspicion of foreigners, although hesitating to disobey Amasis openly, tacitly refused to initiate Pythagoras and advised him to go to the sacred school at Memphis, ostensibly because it was of greater antiquity than that of Heliopolis. At Memphis also he met with the same finesse, and was next sent to the school at Thebes, where finally under the most severe tests--tests which nearly cost him his life--he was fully initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries and thereafter had free access to the treasures of the hierophants.