Neopythagoreanism in A Sentence

    1

    A comparison between the Essenes and the Neopythagoreans shows a parallel so striking as to warrant the theory that the Essenes were profoundly influenced by Neopythagoreanism.

    2

    Lastly Neopythagoreanism furnished Neoplatonism with the weapons with which pagan philosophy made its last stand against Christianity.

    3

    Neopythagoreanism was an attempt to introduce a religious element into pagan philosophy in place of what had come to be regarded as an arid formalism.

    4

    Neopythagoreanism was the first product of an age in which abstract philosophy had begun to pall.

    5

    On the other hand, it was difficult practically to realize this alienation, and a keen sense of this difficulty induced the same hostility to the body as a clog and hindrance, that we find to some extent in Plato, but more fully developed in Neoplatonism, Neopythagoreanism, and other products of the mingling of Greek with Oriental thought.

    6

    Thus Neopythagoreanism is a link in the chain between the old and the new in pagan philosophy.