the religious-philosophical fraternity, which is exactly analogous to the Indic orders of the time; and finally the mystic speculation, which is peculiar to the Pythagorean school, and bears a striking resemblance to the fantastical notions affected by the authors of the Br[=a]hmana.[30] Greek legend is full of the Samian’s travels to Egypt, Chaldaea, Phoenicia, and India.  The fire beneath this smoke is hidden.  One knows not how much to believe of such tales.  But they only strengthen the inference, drawn from ‘the Pythagorean school,’ the man’s work itself, that the mysticism and numbers with which he is surrounded are taken from that system of numbers and from that mysticism which are so astonishingly like his own.  All subsequent philosophies borrowed from Pythagoreanism, and in so far has India helped to form the mind of Europe.[31]

But we cannot omit a yet more important religious influence exerted by India upon the West.  As is well known, Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India.  The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources.  Soul and light are one in the S[=a]nkhya system before they become so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India.  The famous ’three qualities’ of the S[=a]nkhya reappear as the Gnostic ‘three classes,’ [Greek:  pneumagikoi], [Greek:  psuchikoi], [Greek:  ulikoi].[32] In regard to Neo-Platonism, Garbe says:  “The views of Plotinus are in perfect agreement with those of the S[=a]nkhya system."[33] Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, has the Yoga doctrine of immediate perception of truth leading to union with the deity.  As is well known and undisputed, this Porphyry copies directly from the treatise of Bardesanes, which contains an account of the Brahmatis;[34] while in many instances he simply repeats the tenets of the S[=a]nkhya philosophy.  The means of communication may have been Alexandria, where met the trades of the East and West.  Perhaps the philosophers of India as well as of Greece were brought together there.  But, if the East and West had a mutual meeting-ground, the ideas common to both occupy no common place in their respective homes.  In Greece, Pythagoreanism and Gnosticism are strange, and are felt as such by the natives.  In India these traits are founded on ancient beliefs, long current, universal, nationally recognized.  The question of giver and receiver, then, admitting the identity of thought, can scarcely be raised.  If two men meet, one a Methodist and one a Baptist, and after they have conversed the Methodist be found totally immersed, he will not be credited with having invented independently his new mode of baptism.