It compared the doctrines of the different schools with each other, and showed from their contradictions that man has no criterion of truth; that, since his ideas of what is good and what is evil differ according to the country in which he lives, they can have no foundation in Nature, but must be altogether the result of education; that right and wrong are nothing more than fictions created by society for its own purposes.

In Athens, some of the more advanced classes had reached such a pass that they not only denied the unseen, the supernatural, they even affirmed that the world is only a day-dream, a phantasm, and that nothing at all exists.
The topographical configuration of Greece gave an impress to her political condition.

It divided her people into distinct communities having conflicting interests, and made them incapable of centralization.
Incessant domestic wars between the rival states checked her advancement.

She was poor, her leading men had become corrupt.

They were ever ready to barter patriotic considerations for foreign gold, to sell themselves for Persian bribes.