And the main cause why philosophy at once assumed with the Greeks a character distinct from that of the Oriental world, I have already intimated [187], in the absence of a segregated and privileged religious caste.

Philosophy thus fell into the hands of sages, not of priests.

And whatever the Ionian states (the cradle of Grecian wisdom) received from Egypt or the East, they received to reproduce in new and luxuriant prodigality.
The Ionian sages took from an elder wisdom not dogmas never to be questioned, but suggestions carefully to be examined.

It thus fortunately happened that the deeper and maturer philosophy of Greece proper had a kind of intermedium between the systems of other nations and its own.

The Eastern knowledge was borne to Europe through the Greek channels of Asiatic colonies, and became Hellenized as it passed.