Platonic notion of reminiscence in a more spiritual sense--as the awakening or resuscitation of the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls--as the soul's perception of that image; this theory would then perfectly coincide with the Christian doctrine of the divine image originally stamped on the human soul, and of the internal illumination of the soul by the renovation of that image--and hence we ought in no way to be astonished that this Platonic mode of thinking, for such it is rather than any exclusive system,--as it is the first great philosophy of revelation clothed and propounded in an European form--should have ever appeared so captivating to the profound thinkers of Christianity. In Plato's time, that host of Sophists who had sprung out of the dialectic contests of the earlier philosophy, out of its rejection and disbelief of every thing permanent, immutable and eternal in Nature, in life, and in knowledge, as well as out of the democratic spirit of the age, and the ever prevailing immorality--in Plato's time, that host of Sophists completely bewildered and confused the public mind, poisoned all principle and morality in their very source, and accomplished the ruin of society in Greece in general, and in Athens in particular. And the masterly portrait which Plato has given us of these Sophists exhibits well this race, and the pernicious influence they exerted over Grecian intellect, and the whole circle of Grecian states; and this political influence of the Sophists forms the third epoch in the history of Greece, which, by means of these popular sycophants, became daily more and more democratic, till at last it perished in anarchy. The more ancient philosophers of Greece lived almost all in a state of retirement from public life, taking no part in political affairs, or evincing very evident sentiments of hostility to the governments and republics of their native country. They were almost all unfriendly to the prevailing principles of democracy; and the ideal governments, which they, as well as Plato, have sketched, were all in the spirit of a very rigid aristocracy of virtue and law--evincing a very marked predilection for that form of government as it existed, though in a state of great degeneracy, among the Doric Greeks. Long before Plato, the Pythagoreans had inculcated doctrines perfectly similar, or at least of a very kindred nature; and with the view and purpose of introducing their principles into public life, by which undoubtedly the governments and the whole frame of society in Greece, as well as the whole system of Grecian thought, would have assumed a totally new and different shape. But before the Pythagorean confederacy, which was so widely diffused through the Greek states of Southern Italy, was able to accomplish its design, the violent re-action of an opposite party of thinkers destroyed it, or at least deprived it of all ascendancy and political influence.