Similar tendencies are found amongst his followers.
The two tendencies were not always mutually exclusive, but the one or the other was predominant in every case.
The Pythagorean theory of numbers, Neoplatonic ideas of emanation, the Logos, the personified Wisdom, Gnosticism - these and many other features combine to show the antiquity of tendencies which, clad in other shapes, are already found in the old pre-Christian Oriental religions.
Jewish orthodoxy found itself attacked by the more revolutionary aspects of mysticism and its tendencies to alter established customs. While the medieval scholasticism denied the possibility of knowing anything unattainable by reason, the spirit of the Kabbalah held that the Deity could be realized, and it sought to bridge the gulf.
Partly because of political and social divisions thus revealed, conspiracies being rife in the decade 1820-1830, and partly as preparation for the defence against Mexico and Colombia, who throughout these same years were threatening the island with invasion, the captains-general, in 1825, received the powers above referred to; which became, as time passed, monstrously in disaccord with the general tendencies of colonial government and with increasing liberties in Spain, but continued to be the spiritual basis of Spanish rule in the island.
