Whatever the wise man thought, and whatever in his philosophy was the instruction which he imparted to his peers, when he dealt with the world about him he taught his intellectual inferiors a scarcely modified form of the creed of their fathers.

How in his own mind this wise man reconciled the two sets of opinion has been shown above.

The works of sacrifice, with all the inherited belief implied by them, were for him preparatory studies.

The elasticity of his philosophy admitted the whole world of gods, as a temporary reality, into his pantheistic scheme.

It was, therefore, neither the hypocrisy of the Roman augur, nor the fear of results that in his teaching held him to the inheritance he had received.