In much later times, and even down to our own days, the name of the Pythagorean school and science has been forced to serve as a cloak for every noxious farrago of mysticism, as also that of the Neo-Platonists has been made the symbol of every visionary extravagance. But even if (what, however, I greatly doubt) an historical connection can be shown to subsist between the so-called Pythagoreans of later times and the earlier and genuine school, nothing further would follow from such a fact, than a confirmation of my general position. It would but furnish an additional proof that all that is greatest, noblest, and most beautiful, when it once begins to degenerate and corrupt, invariably reaches a proportionate depth of corruption and degeneracy, and assumes the worst and wildest aspect of deformity. As concerns the influence of this school of life, and its political aims and tendencies, which were unquestionably part of the general design of the Pythagorean doctrine: all this must be judged of in conformity with Greek notions and habits, and with reference to the unsettled and disordered state of the several Grecian communities. This being granted, it will appear that a simple but lofty object was the basis of their fraternity. By forming an enlightened aristocracy of highly cultivated minds, of men of scientific attainments, and of pure and noble morals, they hoped to establish a new and better polity, such as might check the reigning anarchy and revolutionary spirit of democracy, which distracted all the republics, whether smaller or greater, into which Greece was at that time divided. But the evil had become too great, and its power was irresistible. But the whole enterprise failed, and its failure entailed the dissolution of the Pythagorean society. Many similar views and political designs, which Plato subsequently ingrafted on his own philosophy, in like manner remained nothing more than ideas, and led to no practical result. A far more considerable influence on life and its relations was exercised by the Sophists. Considered in a political point of view, they were truly and properly pernicious demagogues, and, in the fullest sense of the term, the flatterers of the populace. Not only did they undermine the outward national worship, with its poetical and hereditary associations, but also overthrew the inward religion of good principles and of moral sentiments. In short, they practically taught a true moral atheism, and succeeded in making it the prevailing and ruling principle in the conduct of life.