During the palmy days of Neo‐Platonism these Bards were no more, for their cycle had run its course, and the last of the Druids had perished at Bibractis and Alesia. But the Neo‐Platonic school was for a long time successful, powerful and prosperous. Still, while adopting Âryan Wisdom in its doctrines, the school failed to follow the wisdom of the Brâhmans in practice. It showed its moral and intellectual superiority too openly, caring too much for the great and powerful of this earth. While the Brâhmans and their great Yogîs—experts in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morals and religion—preserved their dignity under the sway of the most powerful princes, remained aloof from the world and would not condescend to visit them or ask for the slightest favour,(577) the Emperors Alexander, Severus, and Julian, and the greatest among the aristocracy of the land, embraced the tenets of the Neo‐Platonists, who mixed freely with the world. The system flourished for several centuries and comprised within the ranks of its followers the ablest and most learned among the men of the time; Hypatia, the teacher of the Bishop Synesius, was one of the ornaments of the School until the fatal and shameful day when she was murdered by the Christian mob at the instigation of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. The school was finally removed to Athens, and closed by order of the Emperor Justinian. How accurate is Dr. Wilder’s remark that Modern writers have commented upon the peculiar views of the Neo‐ Platonists upon these [metaphysical] subjects, seldom representing them correctly, even if this was desired or intended.(578) The few speculations on the sublunary, material, and spiritual universes that they did put into writing—Ammonius never having himself written a line, after the wont of reformers—could not enable posterity to judge them rightly, even had not the early Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics of the Middle Ages, destroyed three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian Library and its later schools. Professor Draper shows that Cardinal Ximenes alone Delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical authors. In the Vatican Library, whole passages in the most rare and precious treatises of the Ancients were found erased and blotted out, “for the sake of interlining them with absurd psalmodies!” Moreover it is well known that over thirty‐six volumes written by Porphyry were burnt and otherwise destroyed by the “Fathers.” Most of the little that is known of the doctrines of the Eclectics is found in the writings of Plotinus and of those same Church Fathers. Says the author of _Neo‐Platonism_: