“ The Soul is no longer an appanage of οὐσία, it is οὐσία itself: the non-material universe is regarded as the sphere of mind or spirit.
Thus Neopythagoreanism is a link in the chain between the old and the new in pagan philosophy. It connects the teaching of Plato with the doctrines of Neoplatonism and brings it into line with the later Stoicism and with the ascetic system of the Essenes. 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. ”

“ God must be worshipped spiritually by prayer and the will to be good, not in outward action. The soul must be freed from its material surrounding, the “muddy vesture of decay,” by an ascetic habit of life. Bodily pleasures and all sensuous impulses must be abandoned as detrimental to the spiritual purity of the soul. God is the principle of good ”

“ A degenerate society cared nothing for syllogisms grown threadbare by repetition. 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. ”