(3). The unemotional piety of the various schools of Islam--the Ḥanafite (Abu Ḥanīfa d. 767), the S̱ẖāfiite (Al-S̱ẖāfi‘ī d. 820), the Mālikite (Al-Mālik d. 795), and the anthropomorphic Ḥambalite (Ibn Ḥambal d. 855)--the bitterest enemy of independent thought--which ruled the masses after the death of Al-Ma’mūn. (4). The religious discussions among the representatives of various creeds encouraged by Al-Ma’mūn, and especially the bitter theological controversy between the As̱ẖ‘arites, and the advocates of Rationalism which tended not only to confine religion within the narrow limits of schools, but also stirred up the spirit to rise above all petty sectarian wrangling. (5). The gradual softening of religious fervency due to the rationalistic tendency of the early ‘Abbāsid period, and the rapid growth of wealth which tended to produce moral laxity and indifference to religious life in the upper circles of Islam. (6). The presence of Christianity as a working ideal of life. It was, however, principally the actual life of the Christian hermit rather than his religious ideas, that exercised the greatest fascination over the minds of early Islamic Saints whose complete unworldliness, though extremely charming in itself, is, I believe, quite contrary to the spirit of Islam. Such was principally the environment of Ṣūfīism, and it is to the combined action of the above condition that we should look for the origin and development of Ṣūfīistic ideas. Given these condition and the Persian mind with an almost innate tendency towards monism, the whole phenomenon of the birth and growth of Ṣūfīism is explained. If we now study the principal pre-existing conditions of Neo-Platonism, we find that similar conditions produced similar results. The barbarian raids which were soon to reduce Emperors of the Palace to Emperors of the Camp, assumed a more serious aspect about the middle of the third century. Plotinus himself speaks of the political unrest of his time in one of his letters to Flaccus.[102:1] When he looked round himself in Alexandria, his birth place, he noticed signs of growing toleration and indifferentism towards religious life. Later on in Rome which had become, so to say, a pantheon of different nations, he found a similar want of seriousness in life, a similar laxity of character in the upper classes of society. In more learned circles philosophy was studied as a branch of literature rather than for its own sake; and Sextus Empiricus, provoked by Antiochus's tendency to fuse scepticism and Stoicism was teaching the old unmixed scepticism of Pyrrho--that intellectual despair which drove Plotinus to find truth in a revelation above thought itself. Above all, the hard unsentimental character of Stoic morality, and the loving piety of the followers of Christ who, undaunted by long and fierce persecutions, were preaching the message of peace and love to the whole Roman world, necessitated a restatement of Pagan thought in a way