importation and not indigenous to Indian soil. Thus it came about that the philosophers of early Greece and Rome were almost invariably avowed sceptics as regards the popular religious beliefs of their time, though in spite of this, with the sole exception of Socrates, they were allowed to preach their doctrines openly in the market place without let or hindrance. Thus, too, the triumph of Christianity brought it eventually into open antagonism with philosophic thought. In this case, however, the dogmatic and intolerant character of the creed suffered no rival schools of opinion, and accordingly, within 200 years of the date at which it was established by Constantine as the recognised religion of the Roman Empire, the Athenian schools of philosophy were forcibly suppressed by Justinian.[4] For some two and a half centuries before this latter date Neoplatonism in one form or another had dominated the intellectual world of philosophy. It had superseded the materialistic philosophies of earlier Rome and Greece, and even before the time of Constantine, the Stoic and Epicurean schools of thought had already ceased to appeal to the inquiring spirit of the time. When, after a thousand years of intervening barbarism, under the influence of the Renaissance movement, men began to turn their attention once more to classic scholarship and classic philosophy, it was to Plato, mainly as interpreted by his successor and follower, Plotinus, that the leading spirits of the day turned in search of a solution of those problems of life which were once more pressing for interpretation, after the intellectual death in life of the Dark Ages, following the break-up of the Roman Empire. Christianity, indeed, had its metaphysics—for every religion is bound, in a sense, to explain its Divinity to its devotees—but they were the bastard metaphysics of the Athanasian Creed, the expression of a political compromise drawn up to satisfy the warring sects of Christendom. Far different was the effort of Plotinus, who sought not only to solve the riddle of the sphinx, but to express in language intelligible to his hearers the solution of the profoundest mysteries of the universe. How far he succeeded in doing so is yet in dispute to the present day. At least the basis of his philosophy still remains as an attempted approximation to the truth which forms the groundwork for the efforts of every new seeker after spiritual enlightenment.