But at present it cannot
even be said whether the Jewish philosophy of religion had any influence
on the genesis of Neoplatonism. On the relation of Neoplatonism to
Christianity and their mutual approximation, see the excellent account
in Tzschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, pp. 574-618. Cf. also Reville, La
Religion a Rome, 1886.]

[Footnote 129: The Christians, that is the Christian preachers, were
most in agreement with the Cynics (see Lucian's Peregrinus Proteus),
both on the negative and on the positive side; but for that very reason
they were hard on one another (Justin and Tatian against Crescens)--not
only because the Christians gave a different basis for the right mode of
life from the Cynics, but above all, because they did not approve of the
self-conscious, contemptuous, proud disposition which Cynicism produced
in many of its adherents. Morality frequently underwent change for the
worse in the hands of Cynics, and became the morality of a "Gentleman,"
such as we have also experience of in modern Cynicism.]

[Footnote 130: The attitude of Celsus, the opponent of the Christians,
is specially instructive here.]

[Footnote 131: For the knowledge of the spread of the idealistic
philosophy the statement of Origen (c. Celsum VI. 2) that Epictetus was
admired not only by scholars, but also by ordinary people who felt in
themselves the impulse to be raised to something higher, is well worthy
of notice.]

[Footnote 132: This point was of importance for the propaganda of
Christianity among the cultured. There seemed to be given here a
reliable, because revealed, Cosmology and history of the world--which
already contained the foundation of everything worth knowing. Both were
needed and both were here set forth in closest union.]

[Footnote 133: The universalism as reached by the Stoics is certainly
again threatened by the self-righteous and self-complacent distinction
between men of virtue, and men of pleasure, who, properly speaking, are
not men. Aristotle had already dealt with the virtuous elite in a
notable way. He says (Polit. 3. 13. p. 1284), that men who are
distinguished by perfect virtue should not be put on a level with the
ordinary mass, and should not be subjected to the constraints of a law
adapted to the average man. "There is no law for these elect, who are a
law to themselves."]

[Footnote 134: Notions of pre-existence were readily suggested by the
Platonic philosophy; yet this whole philosophy rests