To the followers of Plato in the Academy, of Aristotle in the Lyceum, the Cynics of the Cynosargus, and Stoics of the Portico, Epicurus came in the decrepid effeminacy of the age at the moment of its lowest degradation, and, amid the parterres of prettiness which, with the pittance of eighty minæ, he purchased for the purpose, established the so-called philosophy of the Garden. Such was the last expression of that Ionian school which shared somewhat of the Hindoo national character, wherein it originated, and so far resembled a hot-house seed. Opening with gorgeous colors and rich perfume, it grew rapidly, and produced precocious and abundant fruit. But the more western growth was like the oak, hardened by wind and weather, striking its roots into solid earth, and stretching its branches in free air toward both sun and stars. In the Ionic school the human soul performed but a feeble part. The Italic school, on the contrary, was mathematic and astronomic, and at the same time idealistic; it was at once the brain and heart of Grecian progress and power. The former regarded the relations of phenomena as simple modifications of the same, and founded the abstract upon the concrete; whereas, the latter neglected the phenomena themselves for their relations, founding thus the concrete upon the abstract. To the Ionic school the centre of the world's system is the earth; but the centre of the universal system, according to conscious reason in the Italic school, is the sun. Ten fundamental numbers therein formed the decadal astronomy, the harmonious kosmos, whose laws of movement around the great central luminary produced the sweet music of the spheres.