Editorial note — INTRODUCTION

[I.] Pythagoras passed a black-smith shop one day and was struck with the beauty of the two sounds he heard coming from it. He entered the shop, studied the sounds closely and found that the two notes were an octave apart. This observation stimulated him to a detailed study of music which led to his musical philosophy. He believed that all nature and knowledge were contained in harmonic numbers, and that the world had been made in a musical harmonic accord. He invented a sacred quartenary of harmonic numbers to explain the phenomena of life. But Roussier believed that Pythagoras adapted his system from the Chinese.[70]