Refer to Smith's Greek and Roman Biography for account of Carneades.

What our readers may find in the work above referred to is what has come down to us of the philosopher, Carneades, and his New Academic doctrines. We have herein a specimen of the manner in which the theological views of the ancient philosophers have been buried under their polemical speculations, and abstract reasoning on metaphysical and ethical topics. While it is admitted that Cleitomachus, the intimate friend and pupil of Carneades, confessed that he never could ascertain what his master thought on any subject, we have modern writers who assume to know all about it. These wise-acres have never taken into account the possibility of these ancient philosophers finding means to return, and making known just what it was they labored to accomplish. It would seem from the foregoing communication, that Carneades has attained as a spirit a most advanced stage of development, and that it was with the greatest difficulty he could return to set himself right as a teacher of philosophy.

If it is true that the Grecian doctrines concerning Prometheus were derived from the Brahmanical doctrines concerning Chrishna of India, and if it is further true that Pythagoras was a worshipper of Prometheus, this of itself would be sufficient to account for the similarity of Pythagorean and Brahmanical doctrines. It is not expedient here to go into a critical comparison of what is known concerning those philosophies, respectively; but we cannot forego noting the further facts, that Apollonius of Tyana was a follower of Pythagoras, who at the mature age of fifty years went to India to perfect hiself in the Pythagorean philosophy; and that from that time forward he regarded the Indian philosophers his masters; and not Pythagoras, who like himself was but a receiver and teacher of the Indian philosophical doctrines. Facts like these, that are brought out by these astounding spirit disclosures, establish their authenticity beyond reasonable doubt.

But we have another surprise in the statement of the spirit that the philosophy of Plato was nothing more than a combination and reconciliation of the doctrines concerning Christos in the East and Prometheus in the West. It is very certain that the philosophy of Plato was an essentially spiritual system, as contradistinguished from the more or less materialistic philosophical systems of Greece and Rome. No one had a better opportunity to know what the philosophical system of Plato was than Carneades, and we therefore are inclined to accept his construction of it as correct.

Carneades frankly admits that he accepted neither the doctrines concerning the Hindu Saviour Chrishna, nor the Grecian Saviour Prometheus, and tells us that he knew that both those divinities were the result of the superstitious idea that there could be a vicarious offering for sin. As to this he is undoubtedly right. This was the error of primitive man, and it is as rigidly adhered to by the Christians of today, as it was adhered to by the naked savages who first fell into that lamentable error.

The spirit of Carneades tells us that the Christosism of his time, as he had learned as a spirit, had been converted into the Christianity of Constantine and Eusebius, in the fourth century. He tells us that the Bishops of the Christosite churches found it necessary to make that conversion of Christosism, to resist the wave of Hesusism from the West. This is very certain, it being a necessity to Constantine to reconcile the warring elements of Christosism and Hesusism in his dominions, and hence he joined the politic bishops in blending the opposing waves of interest and thought in one Hesus Christos, which has been imposed upon the nations ever since, by the combined power of tyrannical rulers and impiously selfish priests, and which has come down through the centuries to us modified by Christian writers to Jesus Christ. It is very certain that about A. D. 250 this was the great question of agitation throughout the Roman Empire. We regard this communication not only as authentic, but as showing the Hindu origin of Christianity, beyond all reasonable doubt.