{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_1275/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_1275","id":"gutenberg_1275","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1275","summary":null,"tags":["Alexandrian school","Category: History - Ancient","Category: History - Schools & Universities","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1902 Macmillan and Co. \u201cHistorical Lectures and\nEssays\u201d edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org\n\n                          [Picture: Book cover]\n\n\n\n\n\n                     ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS. {3}\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nI SHOULD not have presumed to choose for any lectures of mine such a\nsubject as that which I have tried to treat in this book.  The subject\nwas chosen by the Institution where the lectures were delivered.  Still\nless should I have presumed to print them of my own accord, knowing how\nfragmentary and crude they are.  They were printed at the special request\nof my audience.  Least of all, perhaps, ought I to have presumed to\npublish them, as I have done, at Cambridge, where any inaccuracy or\nsciolism (and that such defects exist in these pages, I cannot but fear)\nwould be instantly detected, and severely censured: but nevertheless, it\nseemed to me that Cambridge was the fittest place in which they could see\nthe light, because to Cambridge I mainly owe what little right method or\nsound thought may be found in them, or indeed, in anything which I have\never written.  In the heyday of youthful greediness and ambition, when\nthe mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the universe, must needs\nknow everything, or rather know about everything, at once and on the\nspot, too many are apt, as I have been in past years, to complain of\nCambridge studies as too dry and narrow: but as time teaches the student,\nyear by year, what is really required for an understanding of the objects\nwith which he meets, he begins to find that his University, in as far as\nhe has really received her teaching into himself, has given him, in her\ncriticism, her mathematics, above all, in Plato, something which all the\npopular knowledge, the lectures and institutions of the day, and even\ngood books themselves, cannot give, a boon more precious than learning;\nnamely, the art of learning.  That instead of casting into his lazy lap\ntreasures which he would not have known how to use, she has taught him to\nmine for them himself; and has by her wise refusal to gratify his\nintellectual greediness, excited his hunger, only that he may be the\nstronger to hunt and till for his own subsistence; and thus, the deeper\nhe drinks, in after years, at fountains wisely forbidden to him while he\nwas a Cambridge student, and sees his old companions growing up into\nsound-headed and sound-hearted practical men, liberal and expansive, and\nyet with a firm standing-ground for thought and action, he learns to\ncomplain less and less of Cambridge studies, and more and more of that\nconceit and haste of his own, which kept him from reaping the full\nadvantage of her training.\n\nThese Lectures, as I have said, are altogether crude and fragmentary\u2014how,\nindeed, could they be otherwise, dealing with so vast a subject, and so\nlong a period of time?  They are meant neither as Essays nor as Orations,\nbut simply as a collection of hints to those who may wish to work out the\nsubject for themselves; and, I trust, as giving some glimpses of a\ncentral idea, in the light of which the spiritual history of Alexandria,\nand perhaps of other countries also, may be seen to have in itself a\ncoherence and organic method.\n\nI was of course compelled, by the circumstances under which these\nLectures were delivered, to keep clear of all points which are commonly\ncalled \u201ccontroversial.\u201d  I cannot but feel that this was a gain, rather\nthan a loss; because it forced me, if I wished to give any interpretation\nat all of Alexandrian thought, any Theodicy at all of her fate, to refer\nto laws which I cannot but believe to be deeper, wider, more truly\neternal than the points which cause most of our modern controversies,\neither theological or political; laws which will, I cannot but believe\nalso, reassert themselves, and have to be reasserted by all wise\nteachers, very soon indeed, and it may be under most novel embodiments,\nbut without any change in their eternal spirit.\n\nFor I may say, I hope, now (what if said ten years ago would have only\nexcited laughter), that I cannot but subscribe to the opinion of the many\nwise men who believe that Europe, and England as an integral part\nthereof, is on the eve of a revolution, spiritual and political, as vast\nand awful as that which took place at the Reformation; and that,\nbeneficial as that revolution will doubtless be to the destinies of\nmankind in general, it depends upon the wisdom and courage of each nation\nindividually, whether that great deluge shall issue, as the Reformation\ndid, in a fresh outgrowth of European nobleness and strength or usher in,\nafter pitiable confusions and sorrows, a second Byzantine age of\nstereotyped effeminacy and imbecility.  For I have as little sympathy\nwith those who prate so loudly of the progress of the species, and the\nadvent of I know-not-what Cockaigne of universal peace and plenty, as I\nhave with those who believe on the strength of \u201cunfulfilled prophecy,\u201d\nthe downfall of Christianity, and the end of the human race to be at\nhand.  Nevertheless, one may well believe that prophecy will be fulfilled\nin this great crisis, as it is in every great crisis, although one be\nunable to conceive by what method of symbolism the drying up of the\nEuphrates can be twisted to signify the fall of Constantinople: and one\ncan well believe that a day of judgment is at hand, in which for every\nnation and institution, the wheat will be sifted out and gathered into\nGod\u2019s garner, for the use of future generations, and the chaff burnt up\nwith that fire unquenchable which will try every man\u2019s work, without\nbeing of opinion that after a few more years are over, the great majority\nof the human race will be consigned hopelessly to never-ending torments.\n\nIf prophecy be indeed a divine message to man; if it be anything but a\ncabbala, useless either to the simple-minded or to the logical, intended\nonly for the plaything of a few devout fancies, it must declare the\nunchangeable laws by which the unchangeable God is governing, and has\nalways governed, the human race; and therefore only by understanding what\nhas happened, can we understand what will happen; only by understanding\nhistory, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely by picking\nout\u2014too often arbitrarily and unfairly\u2014a few names and dates from the\nrecords of all the ages, but by trying to discover its organic laws, and\nthe causes which produce in nations, creeds, and systems, health and\ndisease, growth, change, decay and death.  If, in one small corner of\nthis vast field, I shall have thrown a single ray of light upon these\nsubjects\u2014if I shall have done anything in these pages towards\nillustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall believe that I\nhave done better service to the Catholic Faith and the Scriptures, than\nif I did really \u201cknow the times and the seasons, which the Father has\nkept in His own hand.\u201d  For by the former act I may have helped to make\nsome one man more prudent and brave to see and to do what God requires of\nhim; by the latter I could only add to that paralysis of superstitious\nfear, which is already but too common among us, and but too likely to\nhinder us from doing our duty manfully against our real foes, whether it\nbe pestilence at home or tyranny abroad.\n\nThese last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to say a\nfew words.  I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some allusion to\nthe present war.  To have entered further into political questions would\nhave been improper in the place where those Lectures were delivered: but\nI cannot refrain from saying here something more on this matter; and\nthat, first, because all political questions have their real root in\nmoral and spiritual ones, and not (as too many fancy) in questions merely\nrelating to the balance of power or commercial economy, and are (the\nworld being under the guidance of a spiritual, and not a physical Being)\nfinally decided on those spiritual grounds, and according to the just\nlaws of the kingdom of God; and, therefore, the future political\nhoroscope of the East depends entirely on the present spiritual state of\nits inhabitants, and of us who have (and rightly) taken up their cause;\nin short, on many of those questions on which I have touched in these\nLectures: and next, because I feel bound, in justice to myself, to guard\nagainst any mistake about my meaning or supposition that I consider the\nTurkish empire a righteous thing, or one likely to stand much longer on\nthe face of God\u2019s earth.\n\nThe Turkish empire, as it now exists, seems to me an altogether\nunrighteous and worthless thing.  It stands no longer upon the assertion\nof the great truth of Islam, but on the merest brute force and\noppression.  It has long since lost the only excuse which one race can\nhave for holding another in subjection; that which we have for taking on\nourselves the tutelage of the Hindoos, and which Rome had for its\ntutelage of the Syrians and Egyptians; namely, the governing with\ntolerable justice those who cannot govern themselves, and making them\nbetter and more prosperous people, by compelling them to submit to law.\nI do not know when this excuse is a sufficient one.  God showed that it\nwas so for several centuries in the case of the Romans; God will show\nwhether it is in the case of our Indian empire: but this I say, that the\nTurkish empire has not even that excuse to plead; as is proved by the\npatent fact that the whole East, the very garden of the old world, has\nbecome a desert and a ruin under the upas-blight of their government.\n\nAs for the regeneration of Turkey, it is a question whether the\nregeneration of any nation which has sunk, not into mere valiant\nsavagery, but into effete and profligate luxury, is possible.  Still more\nis it a question whether a regeneration can be effected, not by the rise\nof a new spiritual idea (as in the case of the Koreish), but simply by\nmore perfect material appliances, and commercial prudence.  History gives\nno instance, it seems to me, of either case; and if our attempt to\nregenerate Greece by freeing it has been an utter failure, much more, it\nseems to me, would any such attempt fail in the case of the Turkish race.\nFor what can be done with a people which has lost the one great quality\nwhich was the tenure of its existence, its military skill?  Let any one\nread the accounts of the Turkish armies in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and\nseventeenth centuries, when they were the tutors and models of all Europe\nin the art of war, and then consider the fact that those very armies\nrequire now to be officered by foreign adventurers, in order to make them\ncapable of even keeping together, and let him ask himself seriously,\nwhether such a fall can ever be recovered.  When, in the age of\nTheodosius, and again in that of Justinian, the Roman armies had fallen\ninto the same state; when the Italian legions required to be led by\nStilicho the Vandal, and the Byzantine by Belisar the Sclav and Narses\nthe Persian, the end of all things was at hand, and came; as it will come\nsoon to Turkey.\n\nBut if Turkey deserves to fall, and must fall, it must not fall by our\ntreachery.  Its sins will surely be avenged upon it: but wrong must not\navenge wrong, or the penalty is only passed on from one sinner to\nanother.  Whatsoever element of good is left in the Turk, to that we must\nappeal as our only means, if not of saving him, still of helping him to a\nquiet euthanasia, and absorption into a worthier race of successors.  He\nis said (I know not how truly) to have one virtue left; that of\nfaithfulness to his word.  Only by showing him that we too abhor\ntreachery and bad faith, can we either do him good, or take a safe\nstanding-ground in our own peril.  And this we have done; and for this we\nshall be rewarded.  But this is surely not all our duty.  Even if we\nshould be able to make the civil and religious freedom of the Eastern\nChristians the price of our assistance to the Mussulman, the struggle\nwill not be over; for Russia will still be what she has always been, and\nthe northern Anarch will be checked, only to return to the contest with\nfiercer lust of aggrandisement, to enact the part of a new Macedon,\nagainst a new Greece, divided, not united, by the treacherous bond of\nthat balance of power, which is but war under the guise of peace.  Europe\nneeds a holier and more spiritual, and therefore a stronger union, than\ncan be given by armed neutralities, and the so-called cause of order.\nShe needs such a bond as in the Elizabethan age united the free states of\nEurope against the Anarch of Spain, and delivered the Western nations\nfrom a rising world-tyranny, which promised to be even more hideous than\nthe elder one of Rome.  If, as then, England shall proclaim herself the\nchampion of freedom by acts, and not by words and paper, she may, as she\ndid then, defy the rulers of the darkness of this world, for the God of\nLight will be with her.  But, as yet, it is impossible to look without\nsad forebodings upon the destiny of a war, begun upon the express\nunderstanding that evil shall be left triumphant throughout Europe,\nwheresoever that evil does not seem, to our own selfish\nshort-sightedness, to threaten us with immediate danger; with promises,\nthat under the hollow name of the Cause of Order\u2014and that promise made by\na revolutionary Anarch\u2014the wrongs of Italy, Hungary, Poland, Sweden,\nshall remain unredressed, and that Prussia and Austria, two tyrannies,\nthe one far more false and hypocritical, the other even more rotten than\nthat of Turkey, shall, if they will but observe a hollow and uncertain\nneutrality (for who can trust the liar and the oppressor?)\u2014be allowed not\nonly to keep their ill-gotten spoils, but even now to play into the hands\nof our foe, by guarding his Polish frontier for him, and keeping down the\nvictims of his cruelty, under pretence of keeping down those of their\nown.\n\nIt is true, the alternative is an awful one; one from which statesmen and\nnations may well shrink: but it is a question, whether that alternative\nmay not be forced upon us sooner or later, whether we must not from the\nfirst look it boldly in the face, as that which must be some day, and for\nwhich we must prepare, not cowardly, and with cries about God\u2019s wrath and\njudgments against us\u2014which would be abject, were they not expressed in\nsuch second-hand stock-phrases as to make one altogether doubt their\nsincerity, but chivalrously, and with awful joy, as a noble calling, an\nhonour put upon us by the God of Nations, who demands of us, as some\nsmall return for all His free bounties, that we should be, in this great\ncrisis, the champions of Freedom and of Justice, which are the cause of\nGod.  At all events, we shall not escape our duty by being afraid of it;\nwe shall not escape our duty by inventing to ourselves some other duty,\nand calling it \u201cOrder.\u201d  Elizabeth did so at first.  She tried to keep\nthe peace with Spain; she shrank from injuring the cause of Order (then a\nnobler one than now, because it was the cause of Loyalty, and not merely\nof Mammon) by assisting the Scotch and the Netherlanders: but her duty\nwas forced upon her; and she did it at last, cheerfully, boldly, utterly,\nlike a hero; she put herself at the head of the battle for the freedom of\nthe world, and she conquered, for God was with her; and so that seemingly\nmost fearful of all England\u2019s perils, when the real meaning of it was\nseen, and God\u2019s will in it obeyed manfully, became the foundation of\nEngland\u2019s naval and colonial empire, and laid the foundation of all her\nfuture glories.  So it was then, so it is now; so it will be for ever: he\nwho seeks to save his life will lose it: he who willingly throws away his\nlife for the cause of mankind, which is the cause of God, the Father of\nmankind, he shall save it, and be rewarded a hundred-fold.  That God may\ngrant us, the children of the Elizabethan heroes, all wisdom to see our\nduty, and courage to do it, even to the death, should be our earliest\nprayer.  Our statesmen have done wisely and well in refusing, in spite of\nhot-headed clamours, to appeal to the sword as long as there was any\nchance of a peaceful settlement even of a single evil.  They are doing\nwisely and well now in declining to throw away the scabbard as long as\nthere is hope that a determined front will awe the offender into\nsubmission: but the day may come when the scabbard must be thrown away;\nand God grant that they may have the courage to do it.\n\nIt is reported that our rulers have said, that English diplomacy can no\nlonger recognise \u201cnationalities,\u201d but only existing \u201cgovernments.\u201d  God\ngrant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as a\nspiritual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the central idea\nof English policy; the idea by faith in which she delivered first\nherself, and then the Protestant nations of the Continent, successively\nfrom the yokes of Rome, of Spain, of France; and that they may reassert\nthat most English of all truths again, let the apparent cost be what it\nmay.\n\nIt is true, that this end will not be attained without what is called\nnowadays \u201ca destruction of human life.\u201d  But we have yet to learn (at\nleast if the doctrines which I have tried to illustrate in this little\nbook have any truth in them) whether shot or shell has the power of\ntaking away human life; and to believe, if we believe our Bibles, that\nhuman life can only be destroyed by sin, and that all which is lost in\nbattle is that animal life of which it is written, \u201cFear not those who\ncan kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do: but I\nwill forewarn you whom you shall fear; him who, after he has killed, has\npower to destroy both body and soul in hell.\u201d  Let a man fear him, the\ndestroying devil, and fear therefore cowardice, disloyalty, selfishness,\nsluggishness, which are his works, and to be utterly afraid of which is\nto be truly brave.  God grant that we of the clergy may remember this\nduring the coming war, and instead of weakening the righteous courage and\nhonour of our countrymen by instilling into them selfish and\nsuperstitious fears, and a theory of the future state which represents\nGod, not as a saviour, but a tormentor, may boldly tell them that \u201cHe is\nnot the God of the dead but of the living; for all live unto Him;\u201d and\nthat he who renders up his animal life as a worthless thing, in the cause\nof duty, commits his real and human life, his very soul and self, into\nthe hands of a just and merciful Father, who has promised to leave no\ngood deed unrewarded, and least of all that most noble deed, the dying\nlike a man for the sake not merely of this land of England, but of the\nfreedom and national life of half the world.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE I.\nTHE PTOLEMAIC ERA.\n\n\nBEFORE I begin to lecture upon the Physical and Metaphysical schools of\nAlexandria, it may be better, perhaps, to define the meaning of these two\nepithets.  Physical, we shall all agree, means that which belongs to\n\u03c6\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2; _natura_; nature, that which \u03c6\u03cd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9, _nascitur_, grows, by an\norganic life, and therefore decays again; which has a beginning, and\ntherefore, I presume, an end.  And Metaphysical means that which we learn\nto think of after we think of nature; that which is supernatural, in\nfact, having neither beginning nor end, imperishable, immovable, and\neternal, which does not become, but always is.  These, at least, are the\nwisest definitions of these two terms for us just now; for they are those\nwhich were received by the whole Alexandrian school, even by those\ncommentators who say that Aristotle, the inventor of the term\nMetaphysics, named his treatise so only on account of its following in\nphilosophic sequence his book on Physics.\n\nBut, according to these definitions, the whole history of Alexandria\nmight be to us, from one point of view, a physical school; for\nAlexandria, its society and its philosophy, were born, and grew, and fed,\nand reached their vigour, and had their old age, their death, even as a\nplant or an animal has; and after they were dead and dissolved, the atoms\nof them formed food for new creations, entered into new organisations,\njust as the atoms of a dead plant or animal might do.  Was Alexandria\nthen, from beginning to end, merely a natural and physical phenomenon?\n\nIt may have been.  And yet we cannot deny that Alexandria was also a\nmetaphysical phenomenon, vast and deep enough; seeing that it held for\nsome eighteen hundred years a population of several hundred thousand\nsouls; each of whom, at least according to the Alexandrian philosophy,\nstood in a very intimate relation to those metaphysic things which are\nimperishable and immovable and eternal, and indeed, contained them more\nor less, each man, woman, and child of them in themselves; having wills,\nreasons, consciences, affections, relations to each other; being parents,\nchildren, helpmates, bound together by laws concerning right and wrong,\nand numberless other unseen and spiritual relations.\n\nSurely such a body was not merely natural, any more than any other\nnation, society, or scientific school, made up of men and of the spirits,\nthoughts, affections of men.  It, like them, was surely spiritual; and\ncould be only living and healthy, in as far as it was in harmony with\ncertain spiritual, unseen, and everlasting laws of God; perhaps, as\ncertain Alexandrian philosophers would have held, in as far as it was a\npattern of that ideal constitution and polity after which man was\ncreated, the city of God which is eternal in the Heavens.  If so, may we\nnot suspect of this Alexandria that it was its own fault if it became a\nmerely physical phenomenon; and that it stooped to become a part of\nnature, and took its place among the things which are born to die, only\nby breaking the law which God had appointed for it; so fulfilling, in its\nown case, St. Paul\u2019s great words, that death entered into the world by\nsin, and that sin is the transgression of the law?\n\nBe that as it may, there must have been metaphysic enough to be learnt in\nthat, or any city of three hundred thousand inhabitants, even though it\nhad never contained lecture-room or philosopher\u2019s chair, and had never\nheard the names of Aristotle and Plato.  Metaphysic enough, indeed, to be\nlearnt there, could we but enter into the heart of even the most brutish\nnegro slave who ever was brought down the Nile out of the desert by\nNubian merchants, to build piers and docks in whose commerce he did not\nshare, temples whose worship he did not comprehend, libraries and\ntheatres whose learning and civilisation were to him as much a sealed\nbook as they were to his countryman, and fellow-slave, and only friend,\nthe ape.  There was metaphysic enough in him truly, and things eternal\nand immutable, though his dark-skinned descendants were three hundred\nyears in discovering the fact, and in proving it satisfactorily to all\nmankind for ever.  You must pardon me if I seem obscure; I cannot help\nlooking at the question with a somewhat Alexandrian eye, and talking of\nthe poor negro dock-worker as certain Alexandrian philosophers would have\ntalked, of whom I shall have to speak hereafter.\n\nI should have been glad, therefore, had time permitted me, instead of\nconfining myself strictly to what are now called \u201cthe physic and\nmetaphysic schools\u201d of Alexandria, to have tried as well as I could to\nmake you understand how the whole vast phenomenon grew up, and supported\na peculiar life of its own, for fifteen hundred years and more, and was\nfelt to be the third, perhaps the second city of the known world, and one\nso important to the great world-tyrant, the C\u00e6sar of Rome, that no Roman\nof distinction was ever sent there as prefect, but the Alexandrian\nnational vanity and pride of race was allowed to the last to pet itself\nby having its tyrant chosen from its own people.\n\nBut, though this cannot be, we may find human elements enough in the\nschools of Alexandria, strictly so called, to interest us for a few\nevenings; for these schools were schools of men; what was discovered and\ntaught was discovered and taught by men, and not by thinking-machines;\nand whether they would have been inclined to confess it or not, their own\npersonal characters, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, strength and\nweakness, beliefs and disbeliefs, determined their metaphysics and their\nphysics for them, quite enough to enable us to feel for them as men of\nlike passions with ourselves; and for that reason only, men whose\nthoughts and speculations are worthy of a moment\u2019s attention from us.\nFor what is really interesting to man, save men, and God, the Father of\nmen?\n\nIn the year 331 B.C. one of the greatest intellects whose influence the\nworld has ever felt, saw, with his eagle glance, the unrivalled advantage\nof the spot which is now Alexandria; and conceived the mighty project of\nmaking it the point of union of two, or rather of three worlds.  In a new\ncity, named after himself, Europe, Asia, and Africa were to meet and to\nhold communion.  A glance at the map will show you what an \u1f40\u03bc\u03c6\u03b1\u03bb\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b3\u1fc6\u03c2, a\ncentre of the world, this Alexandria is, and perhaps arouse in your\nminds, as it has often done in mine, the suspicion that it has not yet\nfulfilled its whole destiny, but may become at any time a prize for\ncontending nations, or the centre of some world-wide empire to come.\nCommunicating with Europe and the Levant by the Mediterranean, with India\nby the Red Sea, certain of boundless supplies of food from the\ndesert-guarded valley of the Nile, to which it formed the only key, thus\nkeeping all Egypt, as it were, for its own private farm, it was weak only\non one side, that of Judea.  That small strip of fertile mountain land,\ncontaining innumerable military positions from which an enemy might annoy\nEgypt, being, in fact, one natural chain of fortresses, was the key to\nPhoenicia and Syria.  It was an eagle\u2019s eyrie by the side of a pen of\nfowls.  It must not be left defenceless for a single year.  Tyre and Gaza\nhad been taken; so no danger was to be apprehended from the seaboard: but\nto subdue the Judean mountaineers, a race whose past sufferings had\nhardened them in a dogged fanaticism of courage and endurance, would be a\nlong and sanguinary task.  It was better to make terms with them; to\nemploy them as friendly warders of their own mountain walls.  Their very\nfanaticism and isolation made them sure allies.  There was no fear of\ntheir fraternising with the Eastern invaders.  If the country was left in\ntheir hands, they would hold it against all comers.  Terms were made with\nthem; and for several centuries they fulfilled their trust.\n\nThis I apprehend to be the explanation of that conciliatory policy of\nAlexander\u2019s toward the Jews, which was pursued steadily by the Ptolemies,\nby Pompey, and by the Romans, as long as these same Jews continued to be\nendurable upon the face of the land.  At least, we shall find the history\nof Alexandria and that of Judea inextricably united for more than three\nhundred years.\n\nSo arose, at the command of the great conqueror, a mighty city, around\nthose two harbours, of which the western one only is now in use.  The\nPharos was then an island.  It was connected with the mainland by a great\nmole, furnished with forts and drawbridges.  On the ruins of that mole\nnow stands the greater part of the modern city; the vast site of the\nancient one is a wilderness.\n\nBut Alexander was not destined to carry out his own magnificent project.\nThat was left for the general whom he most esteemed, and to whose\npersonal prowess he had once owed his life; a man than whom history knows\nfew greater, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus.  He was an adventurer, the son of\nan adventurer, his mother a cast-off concubine of Philip of Macedon.\nThere were those who said that he was in reality a son of Philip himself.\nHowever, he rose at court, became a private friend of young Alexander,\nand at last his Somatophylax, some sort of Colonel of the Life Guards.\nAnd from thence he rose rapidly, till after his great master\u2019s death he\nfound himself despot of Egypt.\n\nHis face, as it appears on his coins, is of the loftiest and most\nJove-like type of Greek beauty.  There is a possibility about it, as\nabout most old Greek faces, of boundless cunning; a lofty irony too, and\na contemptuousness, especially about the mouth, which puts one in mind of\nGoethe\u2019s expression; the face, altogether, of one who knew men too well\nto respect them.  At least, he was a man of clear enough vision.  He saw\nwhat was needed in those strange times, and he went straight to the thing\nwhich he saw.  It was his wisdom which perceived that the huge amorphous\nempire of Alexander could not be kept together, and advised its partition\namong the generals, taking care to obtain himself the lion\u2019s share; not\nin size, indeed, but in capability.  He saw, too (what every man does not\nsee), that the only way to keep what he had got was to make it better,\nand not worse, than he found it.  His first Egyptian act was to put to\ndeath Cleomenes, Alexander\u2019s lieutenant, who had amassed vast treasures\nby extortion; and who was, moreover, (for Ptolemy was a prudent man) a\ndangerous partisan of his great enemy, Perdiccas.  We do not read that he\nrefunded the treasures: but the Egyptians surnamed him Soter, the\nSaviour; and on the whole he deserved the title.  Instead of the wretched\nmisrule and slavery of the conquering Persian dynasty, they had at least\nlaw and order, reviving commerce, and a system of administration, we are\ntold (I confess to speaking here quite at second-hand), especially\nadapted to the peculiar caste-society, and the religious prejudices of\nEgypt.  But Ptolemy\u2019s political genius went beyond such merely material\nand Warburtonian care for the conservation of body and goods of his\nsubjects.  He effected with complete success a feat which has been\nattempted, before and since, by very many princes and potentates, but has\nalways, except in Ptolemy\u2019s case, proved somewhat of a failure, namely,\nthe making a new deity.  Mythology in general was in a rusty state.  The\nold Egyptian gods had grown in his dominions very unfashionable, under\nthe summary iconoclasm to which they had been subjected by the Monotheist\nPersians\u2014the Puritans of the old world, as they have been well called.\nIndeed, all the dolls, and the treasure of the dolls\u2019 temples too, had\nbeen carried off by Cambyses to Babylon.  And as for the Greek gods,\nphilosophers had sublimed them away sadly during the last century: not to\nmention that Alexander\u2019s Macedonians, during their wanderings over the\nworld, had probably become rather remiss in their religious exercises,\nand had possibly given up mentioning the Unseen world, except for those\nhortatory purposes for which it used to be employed by Nelson\u2019s veterans.\nBut, as Ptolemy felt, people (women especially) must have something\nwherein to believe.  The \u201cReligious Sentiment\u201d in man must be satisfied.\nBut, how to do it? How to find a deity who would meet the aspirations of\nconquerors as well as conquered\u2014of his most irreligious Macedonians, as\nwell as of his most religious Egyptians?  It was a great problem: but\nPtolemy solved it.  He seems to have taken the same method which Brindley\nthe engineer used in his perplexities, for he went to bed.  And there he\nhad a dream: How the foreign god Serapis, of Pontus (somewhere near this\npresent hapless Sinope), appeared to him, and expressed his wish to come\nto Alexandria, and there try his influence on the Religious Sentiment.\nSo Serapis was sent for, and came\u2014at least the idol of him,\nand\u2014accommodating personage!\u2014he actually fitted.  After he had been there\nawhile, he was found to be quite an old acquaintance\u2014to be, in fact, the\nGreek Jove, and two or three other Greek gods, and also two or three\nEgyptian gods beside\u2014indeed, to be no other than the bull Apis, after his\ndeath and deification.  I can tell you no more.  I never could find that\nanything more was known.  You may see him among Greek and Roman statues\nas a young man, with a sort of high basket-shaped Persian turban on his\nhead.  But, at least, he was found so pleasant and accommodating a\nconscience-keeper, that he spread, with Isis, his newly-found mother, or\nwife, over the whole East, and even to Rome.  The Consuls there\u201450 years\nB.C.\u2014found the pair not too respectable, and pulled down their temples.\nBut, so popular were they, in spite of their bad fame, that seven years\nafter, the Triumvirs had to build the temples up again elsewhere; and\nfrom that time forth, Isis and Serapis, in spite, poor things, of much\npersecution, were the fashionable deities of the Roman world.  Surely\nthis Ptolemy was a man of genius!\n\nBut Ptolemy had even more important work to do than making gods.  He had\nto make men; for he had few or none ready made among his old veterans\nfrom Issus and Arbela.  He had no hereditary aristocracy: and he wanted\nnone.  No aristocracy of wealth; that might grow of itself, only too fast\nfor his despotic power.  But as a despot, he must have a knot of men\nround him who would do his work.  And here came out his deep insight into\nfact.  It had not escaped that man, what was the secret of Greek\nsupremacy.  How had he come there?  How had his great master conquered\nhalf the world?  How had the little semi-barbarous mountain tribe up\nthere in Pella, risen under Philip to be the master-race of the globe?\nHow, indeed, had Xenophon and his Ten Thousand, how had the handfuls of\nSalamis and Marathon, held out triumphantly century after century,\nagainst the vast weight of the barbarian?  The simple answer was: Because\nthe Greek has mind, the barbarian mere brute force.  Because mind is the\nlord of matter; because the Greek being the cultivated man, is the only\ntrue man; the rest are \u03b2\u03ac\u03c1\u03b2\u03b1\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9, mere things, clods, tools for the wise\nGreeks\u2019 use, in spite of all their material phantom-strength of\nelephants, and treasures, and tributaries by the million.  Mind was the\nsecret of Greek power; and for that Ptolemy would work.  He would have an\naristocracy of intellect; he would gather round him the wise men of the\nworld (glad enough most of them to leave that miserable Greece, where\nevery man\u2019s life was in his hand from hour to hour), and he would develop\nto its highest the conception of Philip, when he made Aristotle the tutor\nof his son Alexander.  The consequences of that attempt were written in\nletters of blood, over half the world; Ptolemy would attempt it once\nmore, with gentler results.  For though he fought long, and often, and\nwell, as Despot of Egypt, no less than as general of Alexander, he was\nnot at heart a man of blood, and made peace the end of all his wars.\n\nSo he begins.  Aristotle is gone: but in Aristotle\u2019s place Philetas the\nsweet singer of Cos, and Zenodotus the grammarian of Ephesus, shall\neducate his favourite son, and he will have a literary court, and a\nliterary age.  Demetrius Phalereus, the Admirable Crichton of his time,\nthe last of Attic orators, statesman, philosopher, poet, warrior, and\neach of them in the most graceful, insinuating, courtly way, migrates to\nAlexandria, after having had the three hundred and sixty statues, which\nthe Athenians had too hastily erected to his honour, as hastily pulled\ndown again.  Here was a prize for Ptolemy!  The charming man became his\nbosom friend and fellow, even revised the laws of his kingdom, and fired\nhim, if report says true, with a mighty thought\u2014no less a one than the\ngreat public Library of Alexandria; the first such institution, it is\nsaid, which the world had ever seen.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nSo a library is begun by Soter, and organised and completed by\nPhiladelphus; or rather two libraries, for while one part was kept at the\nSerapeium, that vast temple on the inland rising ground, of which, as far\nas we can discover, Pompey\u2019s Pillar alone remains, one column out of four\nhundred, the rest was in the Brucheion adjoining the Palace and the\nMuseum.  Philadelphus buys Aristotle\u2019s collection to add to the stock,\nand Euergetes cheats the Athenians out of the original MSS. of \u00c6schylus,\nSophocles, and Euripides, and adds largely to it by more honest methods.\nEumenes, King of Pergamus in Asia Minor, fired with emulation, commences\na similar collection, and is so successful, that the reigning Ptolemy has\nto cut off his rival\u2019s supplies by prohibiting the exportation of\npapyrus; and the Pergamenian books are henceforth transcribed on\nparchment, parchemin, Pergamene, which thus has its name to this day,\nfrom Pergamus.  That collection, too, found its way at last to\nAlexandria.  For Antony having become possessor of it by right of the\nstronger, gave it to Cleopatra; and it remained at Alexandria for seven\nhundred years.  But we must not anticipate events.\n\nThen there must be besides a Mouseion, a Temple of the Muses, with all\ndue appliances, in a vast building adjoining the palace itself, under the\nvery wing of royalty; and it must have porticos, wherein sages may\nconverse; lecture-rooms, where they may display themselves at their will\nto their rapt scholars, each like a turkey-cock before his brood; and a\nlarge dining-hall, where they may enjoy themselves in moderation, as\nbefits sages, not without puns and repartees, epigrams, anagrams, and\nAttic salt, to be fatal, alas, to poor Diodorus the dialectician.  For\nStilpo, prince of sophists, having silenced him by some quibbling puzzle\nof logic, Ptolemy surnamed him Chronos the Slow.  Poor Diodorus went\nhome, took pen and ink, wrote a treatise on the awful nothing, and died\nin despair, leaving five \u201cdialectical daughters\u201d behind him, to be thorns\nin the sides of some five hapless men of Macedonia, as \u201cemancipated\nwomen;\u201d a class but too common in the later days of Greece, as they will\nalways be, perhaps, in civilisations which are decaying and crumbling to\npieces, leaving their members to seek in bewilderment what they are, and\nwhat bonds connect them with their fellow-beings.  But to return: funds\nshall be provided for the Museum from the treasury; a priest of rank,\nappointed by royalty, shall be curator; botanical and zoological gardens\nshall be attached; collections of wonders made.  In all things the\npresiding genius of Aristotle shall be worshipped; for these, like\nAlexander, were his pupils.  Had he not mapped out all heaven and earth,\nthings seen and unseen, with his entelechies, and energies, and dunameis,\nand put every created and uncreated thing henceforth into its proper\nplace, from the ascidians and polypes of the sea to the virtues and the\nvices\u2014yea, to that Great Deity and Prime Cause (which indeed was all\nthings), _Noesis Noeseon_, \u201cthe Thought of Thoughts,\u201d whom he discovered\nby irrefragable processes of logic, and in whom the philosophers believe\nprivately, leaving Serapis to the women and the sailors?  All they had to\ndo was to follow in his steps; to take each of them a branch, of science\nor literature, or as many branches as one man conveniently can; and\nworking them out on the approved methods, end in a few years, as\nAlexander did, by weeping on the utmost shore of creation that there are\nno more worlds left to conquer.\n\nAlas! the Muses are shy and wild; and though they will haunt, like\nskylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny\nhills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet\nthey are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and\nplentifully stored with comforts.  Royal societies, associations of\nsavants, and the like, are good for many things, but not for the breeding\nof art and genius: for they are things which cannot be bred.  Such\ninstitutions are excellent for physical science, when, as among us now,\nphysical science is going on the right method: but where, as in\nAlexandria, it was going on an utterly wrong method, they stereotype the\nerrors of the age, and invest them with the prestige of authority, and\nproduce mere Sorbonnes, and schools of pedants.  To literature, too, they\ndo some good, that is, in a literary age\u2014an age of reflection rather than\nof production, of antiquarian research, criticism, imitation, when\nbook-making has become an easy and respectable pursuit for the many who\ncannot dig, and are ashamed to beg.  And yet, by adding that same\nprestige of authority, not to mention of good society and Court favour,\nto the popular mania for literature, they help on the growing evil, and\nincrease the multitude of prophets who prophesy out of their own heart\nand have seen nothing.\n\nAnd this was, it must be said, the outcome of all the Ptolem\u00e6an\nappliances.\n\nIn Physics they did little.  In Art nothing.  In Metaphysics less than\nnothing.\n\nWe will first examine, as the more pleasant spectacle of the two, that\nbranch of thought in which some progress was really made, and in which\nthe Ptolemaic schools helped forward the development of men who have\nbecome world-famous, and will remain so, I suppose, until the end of\ntime.\n\nFour names at once attract us: Euclid, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes,\nHipparchus.  Archimedes, also, should be included in the list, for he was\na pupil of the Alexandrian school, having studied (if Proclus is to be\ntrusted) in Egypt, under Conon the Samian, during the reigns of two\nPtolemies, Philadelphus and Euergetes.\n\nOf Euclid, as the founder (according to Proclus) of the Alexandrian\nMathematical school, I must of course speak first.  Those who wish to\nattain to a juster conception of the man and his work than they can do\nfrom any other source, will do well to read Professor De Morgan\u2019s\nadmirable article on him in \u201cSmith\u2019s Classical Dictionary;\u201d which\nincludes, also, a valuable little sketch of the rise of Geometric\nscience, from Pythagoras and Plato, of whose school Euclid was, to the\ngreat master himself.\n\nI shall confine myself to one observation on Euclid\u2019s genius, and on the\nimmense influence which it exerted on after generations.  It seems to me,\nspeaking under correction, that it exerted this, because it was so\ncomplete a type of the general tendency of the Greek mind, deductive,\nrather than inductive; of unrivalled subtlety in obtaining results from\nprinciples, and results again from them _ad infinitum_: deficient in that\nsturdy moral patience which is required for the examination of facts, and\nwhich has made Britain at once a land of practical craftsmen, and of\nearnest scientific discoverers.\n\nVolatile, restless, \u201calways children longing for something new,\u201d as the\nEgyptian priest said of them, they were too ready to believe that they\nhad attained laws, and then, tired with their toy, throw away those\nhastily assumed laws, and wander off in search of others.  Gifted, beyond\nall the sons of men, with the most exquisite perception of form, both\nphysical and metaphysical, they could become geometers and logicians as\nthey became sculptors and artists; beyond that they could hardly rise.\nThe were conscious of their power to build; and it made them ashamed to\ndig.\n\nFour men only among them seem, as far as I can judge, to have had a great\ninductive power: Socrates and Plato in Metaphysics; Archimedes and\nHipparchus in Physics.  But these men ran so far counter to the national\ngenius, that their examples were not followed.  As you will hear\npresently, the discoveries of Archimedes and Hipparchus were allowed to\nremain where they were for centuries.  The Dialectic of Plato and\nSocrates was degraded into a mere art for making anything appear\nalternately true and false, and among the Megaric school, for undermining\nthe ground of all science, and paving the way for scepticism, by denying\nthe natural world to be the object of certain knowledge.  The only\nelement of Plato\u2019s thought to which they clung was, as we shall find from\nthe Neoplatonists, his physical speculations; in which, deserting his\ninductive method, he has fallen below himself into the popular cacoethes,\nand Pythagorean deductive dreams about the mysterious powers of numbers,\nand of the regular solids.\n\nSuch a people, when they took to studying physical science, would be, and\nin fact were, incapable of Chemistry, Geognosy, Comparative Anatomy, or\nany of that noble choir of sister sciences, which are now building up the\nmaterial as well as the intellectual glory of Britain.\n\nTo Astronomy, on the other hand, the pupils of Euclid turned naturally,\nas to the science which required the greatest amount of their favourite\ngeometry: but even that they were content to let pass from its inductive\nto its deductive stage\u2014not as we have done now, after two centuries of\ninductive search for the true laws, and their final discovery by Kepler\nand Newton: but as soon as Hipparchus had propounded any theory which\nwould do instead of the true laws, content there to stop their\nexperiments, and return to their favourite work of commenting, deducing,\nspinning notion out of notion, _ad infinitum_.\n\nStill, they were not all of this temper.  Had they been, they would have\ndiscovered, not merely a little, but absolutely nothing.  For after all,\nif we will consider, induction being the right path to knowledge, every\nman, whether he knows it or not, uses induction, more or less, by the\nmere fact of his having a human reason, and knowing anything at all; as\nM. Jourdain talked prose all his life without being aware of it.\n\nAristarchus is principally famous for his attempt to discover the\ndistance of the sun as compared with that of the moon.  His method was\ningenious enough, but too rough for success, as it depended principally\non the belief that the line bounding the bright part of the moon was an\nexact straight line.  The result was of course erroneous.  He concluded\nthat the sun was 18 times as far as the moon, and not, as we now know,\n400; but his conclusion, like his conception of the vast extent of the\nsphere of the fixed stars, was far enough in advance of the popular\ndoctrine to subject him, according to Plutarch, to a charge of impiety.\n\nEratosthenes, again, contributed his mite to the treasure of human\nscience\u2014his one mite; and yet by that he is better known than by all the\nvolumes which he seems to have poured out, on Ethics, Chronology,\nCriticism on the Old Attic Comedy, and what not, spun out of his weary\nbrain during a long life of research and meditation.  They have all\nperished,\u2014like ninety-nine hundredths of the labours of that great\nliterary age; and perhaps the world is no poorer for the loss.  But one\nthing, which he attempted on a sound and practical philosophic method,\nstands, and will stand for ever.  And after all, is not that enough to\nhave lived for? to have found out one true thing, and, therefore, one\nimperishable thing, in one\u2019s life?  If each one of us could but say when\nhe died: \u201cThis one thing I have found out; this one thing I have proved\nto be possible; this one eternal fact I have rescued from Hela, the realm\nof the formless and unknown,\u201d how rich one such generation might make the\nworld for ever!\n\nBut such is not the appointed method.  The finders are few and far\nbetween, because the true seekers are few and far between; and a whole\ngeneration has often nothing to show for its existence but one solitary\ngem which some one man\u2014often unnoticed in his time\u2014has picked up for\nthem, and so given them \u201ca local habitation and a name.\u201d\n\nEratosthenes had heard that in Syene, in Upper Egypt, deep wells were\nenlightened to the bottom on the day of the summer solstice, and that\nvertical objects cast no shadows.\n\nHe had before suggested, as is supposed, to Ptolemy Euergetes, to make\nhim the two great copper armill\u00e6, or circles for determining the equinox,\nwhich stood for centuries in \u201cthat which is called the Square\nPorch\u201d\u2014probably somewhere in the Museum.  By these he had calculated the\nobliquity of the ecliptic, closely enough to serve for a thousand years\nafter.  That was one work done.  But what had the Syene shadows to do\nwith that?  Syene must be under that ecliptic.  On the edge of it.  In\nshort, just under the tropic.  Now he had ascertained exactly the\nlatitude of one place on the earth\u2019s surface.  He had his known point\nfrom whence to start on a world-journey, and he would use it; he would\ncalculate the circumference of the earth\u2014and he did it.  By observations\nmade at Alexandria, he ascertained its latitude compared with that of\nSyene; and so ascertained what proportion to the whole circumference was\nborne by the 5000 stadia between Alexandria and Syene.  He fell into an\nerror, by supposing Alexandria and Syene to be under the same meridians\nof longitude: but that did not prevent his arriving at a fair rough\nresult of 252,000 stadia\u201431,500 Roman miles; considerably too much; but\nstill, before him, I suppose, none knew whether it was 10,000, or\n10,000,000.  The right method having once been found, nothing remained\nbut to employ it more accurately.\n\nOne other great merit of Eratosthenes is, that he first raised Geography\nto the rank of a science.  His Geographica were an organic collection,\nthe first the world had ever seen, of all the travels and books of\nearth-description heaped together in the Great Library, of which he was\nfor many years the keeper.  He began with a geognostic book, touched on\nthe traces of Cataclysms and Change visible on the earth\u2019s surface;\nfollowed by two books, one a mathematical book, the other on political\ngeography, and completed by a map\u2014which one would like to see: but\u2014not a\ntrace of all remains, save a few quoted fragments\u2014\n\n               We are such stuff\n   As dreams are made of.\n\nBut if Eratosthenes had hold of eternal fact and law on one point, there\nwas a contemporary who had hold of it in more than one.  I mean\nArchimedes; of whom, as I have said, we must speak as of an Alexandrian.\nIt was as a mechanician, rather than as an astronomer, that he gained his\nreputation.  The stories of his Hydraulic Screw, the Great Ship which he\nbuilt for Hiero, and launched by means of machinery, his crane, his\nwar-engines, above all his somewhat mythical arrangement of mirrors, by\nwhich he set fire to ships in the harbour\u2014all these, like the story of\nhis detecting the alloy in Hiero\u2019s crown, while he himself was in the\nbath, and running home undressed shouting \u03b5\u1f55\u03c1\u03b7\u03ba\u03b1\u2014all these are\nschoolboys\u2019 tales.  To the thoughtful person it is the method of the man\nwhich constitutes his real greatness, that power of insight by which he\nsolved the two great problems of the nature of the lever and of\nhydrostatic pressure, which form the basis of all static and hydrostatic\nscience to this day.  And yet on that very question of the lever the\ngreat mind of Aristotle babbles\u2014neither sees the thing itself, nor the\nway towards seeing it.  But since Archimedes spoke, the thing seems\nself-evident to every schoolboy.  There is something to me very solemn in\nsuch a fact as this.  It brings us down to some of the very deepest\nquestions of metaphysic.  This mental insight of which we boast so much,\nwhat is it?  Is it altogether a process of our own brain and will?  If it\nbe, why have so few the power, even among men of power, and they so\nseldom?  If brain alone were what was wanted, what could not Aristotle\nhave discovered?  Or is it that no man can see a thing unless God shows\nit him?  Is it that in each separate act of induction, that mysterious\nand transcendental process which cannot, let logicians try as they will,\nbe expressed by any merely logical formula, Aristotelian or other\u2014is it I\nsay, that in each separate act of induction we do not find the law, but\nthe law is shown to us, by Him who made the law? Bacon thought so.  Of\nthat you may find clear proof in his writings.  May not Bacon be right?\nMay it not be true that God does in science, as well as in ethics, hide\nthings from the wise and prudent, from the proud, complete,\nself-contained systematiser like Aristotle, who must needs explain all\nthings in heaven and earth by his own formul\u00e6, and his entelechies and\nenergies, and the rest of the notions which he has made for himself out\nof his own brain, and then pack each thing away in its proper niche in\nhis great cloud-universe of conceptions?  Is it that God hides things\nfrom such men many a time, and reveals them to babes, to gentle,\naffectionate, simple-hearted men, such as we know Archimedes to have\nbeen, who do not try to give an explanation for a fact, but feel how\nawful and divine it is, and wrestle reverently and stedfastly with it, as\nJacob with the Angel, and will not let it go, until it bless them?  Sure\nI am, from what I have seen of scientific men, that there is an intimate\nconnection between the health of the moral faculties and the health of\nthe inductive ones; and that the proud, self-conceited, and passionate\nman will see nothing: perhaps because nothing will be shown him.\n\nBut we must leave Archimedes for a man not perhaps so well known, but to\nwhom we owe as much as to the great Syracusan\u2014Hipparchus the astronomer.\nTo his case much which I have just said applies.  In him astronomic\nscience seemed to awaken suddenly to a true inductive method, and after\nhim to fall into its old slumber for 300 years.  In the meantime\nTimocharis, Aristyllus, and Conon had each added their mites to the\ndiscoveries of Eratosthenes: but to Hipparchus we owe that theory of the\nheavens, commonly called the Ptolemaic system, which, starting from the\nassumption that the earth was the centre of the universe, attempted to\nexplain the motions of the heavenly bodies by a complex system of\nsupposed eccentrics and epicycles.  This has of course now vanished\nbefore modern discoveries.  But its value as a scientific attempt lies in\nthis: that the method being a correct one, correct results were obtained,\nthough starting from a false assumption; and Hipparchus and his\nsuccessors were enabled by it to calculate and predict the changes of the\nheavens, in spite of their clumsy instruments, with almost as much\naccuracy as we do now.\n\nFor the purpose of working out this theory he required a science of\ntrigonometry, plane and spherical: and this he accordingly seems to have\ninvented.  To him also we owe the discovery of that vast gradual change\nin the position of the fixed stars, in fact, of the whole celestial\nsystem, now known by the name of the precession of the equinoxes; the\nfirst great catalogue of fixed stars, to the number of 1080; attempts to\nascertain whether the length of years and days were constant; with which,\nwith his characteristic love of truth, he seems to have been hardly\nsatisfied.  He too invented the planisphere, or mode of representing the\nstarry heavens upon a plane, and is the father of true geography, having\nformed the happy notion of mapping out the earth, as well as the heavens,\nby degrees of latitude and longitude.\n\nStrange it is, and somewhat sad, that we should know nothing of this\ngreat man, should be hardly able to distinguish him from others of the\nsame name, but through the works of a commentator, who wrote and observed\nin Alexandria 300 years after, during the age of the Antonines.  I mean,\nof course, the famous Ptolemy, whose name so long bore the honour of that\nsystem which really belonged to Hipparchus.\n\nThis single fact speaks volumes for the real weakness of the great\nartificial school of literature and science founded by the kings of\nEgypt.  From the father of Astronomy, as Delambre calls him, to Ptolemy,\nthe first man who seems really to have appreciated him, we have not a\ndiscovery, hardly an observation or a name, to fill the gap.  Physical\nsages there were; but they were geometers and mathematicians, rather than\nastronomic observers and inquirers.  And in spite of all the huge\nappliances and advantages of that great Museum, its inhabitants were\ncontent, in physical science, as in all other branches of thought, to\ncomment, to expound, to do everything but open their eyes and observe\nfacts, and learn from them, as the predecessors whom they pretended to\nhonour had done.  But so it is always.  A genius, an original man\nappears.  He puts himself boldly in contact with facts, asks them what\nthey mean, and writes down their answer for the world\u2019s use.  And then\nhis disciples must needs form a school, and a system; and fancy that they\ndo honour to their master by refusing to follow in his steps; by making\nhis book a fixed dogmatic canon; attaching to it some magical\ninfallibility; declaring the very lie which he disproved by his whole\nexistence, that discovery is henceforth impossible, and the sum of\nknowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered\nbefore them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not\nin the letter, but in spirit and in truth.\n\nFor this, if you will consider, is the true meaning of that great\ncommand, \u201cHonour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the\nland.\u201d  On reverence for the authority of bygone generations depends the\npermanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social,\nnational, and family life: but on reverence of the spirit, not merely of\nthe letter; of the methods of our ancestors, not merely of their\nconclusions.  Ay, and we shall not be able to preserve their conclusions,\nnot even to understand them; they will die away on our lips into skeleton\nnotions, and soulless phrases, unless we see that the greatness of the\nmighty dead has always consisted in this, that they were seekers,\nimprovers, inventors, endued with that divine power and right of\ndiscovery which has been bestowed on us, even as on them; unless we\nbecome such men as they were, and go on to cultivate and develop the\nprecious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead of hiding\ntheir talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making their\ngreatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our\nlaziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths,\nwhile we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and not\nstand still, and try in vain to stop the way.\n\nIt may be said, certainly, as an excuse for these Alexandrian Greeks,\nthat they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they\nonly exhibited the common and natural faults of old age.  For as with\nindividuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought\u2014youth\nis the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong\ninduction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,\nand content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of\ntheir earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and anathematising\nall conclusions which have been arrived at since their own meridian.  It\nis sad: but it is patent and common.  It is sad to think that the day may\ncome to each of us, when we shall have ceased to hope for discovery and\nfor progress; when a thing will seem _\u00e0 priori_ false to us, simply\nbecause it is new; and we shall be saying querulously to the Divine Light\nwhich lightens every man who comes into the world: \u201cHitherto shalt thou\ncome, and no further.  Thou hast taught men enough; yea rather, thou hast\nexhausted thine own infinitude, and hast no more to teach them.\u201d  Surely\nsuch a temper is to be fought against, prayed against, both in ourselves,\nand in the generation in which we live.  Surely there is no reason why\nsuch a temper should overtake old age.  There may be reason enough, \u201cin\nthe nature of things.\u201d  For that which is of nature is born only to decay\nand die.  But in man there is more than dying nature; there is spirit,\nand a capability of spiritual and everlasting life, which renews its\nyouth like the eagle\u2019s, and goes on from strength to strength, and which,\nif it have its autumns and its winters, has no less its ever-recurring\nsprings and summers; if it has its Sabbaths, finds in them only rest and\nrefreshment for coming labour.  And why not in nations, societies,\nscientific schools?  These too are not merely natural: they are\nspiritual, and are only living and healthy in as far as they are in\nharmony with spiritual, unseen, and everlasting laws of God.  May not\nthey, too, have a capability of everlasting life, as long as they obey\nthose laws in faith, and patience, and humility?  We cannot deny the\nanalogy between the individual man and these societies of men.  We\ncannot, at least, deny the analogy between them in growth, decay, and\ndeath.  May we not have hope that it holds good also for that which can\nnever die; and that if they do die, as this old Greek society did, it is\nby no brute natural necessity, but by their own unfaithfulness to that\nwhich they knew, to that which they ought to have known?  It is always\nmore hopeful, always, as I think, more philosophic, to throw the blame of\nfailure on man, on our own selves, rather than on God, and the perfect\nlaw of His universe.  At least let us be sure for ourselves, that such an\nold age as befell this Greek society, as befalls many a man nowadays,\nneed not be our lot.  Let us be sure that earth shows no fairer sight\nthan the old man, whose worn-out brain and nerves make it painful, and\nperhaps impossible, to produce fresh thought himself: but who can yet\nwelcome smilingly and joyfully the fresh thoughts of others; who keeps\nunwearied his faith in God\u2019s government of the universe, in God\u2019s\ncontinual education of the human race; who draws around him the young and\nthe sanguine, not merely to check their rashness by his wise cautions,\nbut to inspirit their sloth by the memories of his own past victories;\nwho hands over, without envy or repining, the lamp of truth to younger\nrunners than himself, and sits contented by, bidding the new generation\nGod speed along the paths untrodden by him, but seen afar off by faith.\nA few such old persons have I seen, both men and women; in whom the young\nheart beat pure and fresh, beneath the cautious and practised brain of\nage, and gray hairs which were indeed a crown of glory.  A few such have\nI seen; and from them I seemed to learn what was the likeness of our\nFather who is in heaven.  To such an old age may He bring you and me, and\nall for whom we are bound to pray.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE II.\nTHE PTOLEMAIC ERA.\n(_Continued_.)\n\n\nI SAID in my first Lecture, that even if royal influence be profitable\nfor the prosecution of physical science, it cannot be profitable for art.\nIt can only produce a literary age, as it did in the Ptolemaic era; a\ngeneration of innumerable court-poets, artificial epigrammatists,\nartificial idyllists, artificial dramatists and epicists; above all, a\ngeneration of critics.  Or rather shall we say, that the dynasty was not\nthe cause of a literary age, but only its correlative?  That when the old\nGreeks lost the power of being free, of being anything but the slaves of\noriental despots, as the Ptolemies in reality were, they lost also the\npower of producing true works of art; because they had lost that youthful\nvigour of mind from which both art and freedom sprang? Let the case be as\nit will, Alexandrian literature need not detain us long\u2014though, alas! it\nhas detained every boy who ever trembled over his Greek grammar, for many\na weary year; and, I cannot help suspecting, has been the main cause that\nso many young men who have spent seven years in learning Greek, know\nnothing about it at the end of the seven.  For I must say, that as far as\nwe can see, these Alexandrian pedants were thorough pedants; very\npolished and learned gentlemen, no doubt, and, like Callimachus, the pets\nof princes: but after all, men who thought that they could make up for\nnot writing great works themselves, by showing, with careful analysis and\ncommentation, how men used to write them of old, or rather how they\nfancied men used to write them; for, consider, if they had really known\nhow the thing was done, they must needs have been able to do it\nthemselves.  Thus Callimachus, the favourite of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and\nlibrarian of his Museum, is the most distinguished grammarian, critic,\nand poet of his day, and has for pupils Eratosthenes, Apollonius Rhodius,\nAristophanes of Byzantium, and a goodly list more.  He is an encyclop\u00e6dia\nin himself.  There is nothing the man does not know, or probably, if we\nspoke more correctly, nothing he does not know about.  He writes on\nhistory, on the Museum, on barbarous names, on the wonders of the world,\non public games, on colonisation, on winds, on birds, on the rivers of\nthe world, and\u2014ominous subject\u2014a sort of comprehensive history of Greek\nliterature, with a careful classification of all authors, each under his\nown heading.  Greek literature was rather in the sere and yellow leaf, be\nsure, when men thought of writing that sort of thing about it.  But\nstill, he is an encyclop\u00e6dic man, and, moreover, a poet.  He writes an\nepic, \u201cAitia,\u201d in four books, on the causes of the myths, religious\nceremonies, and so forth\u2014an ominous sign for the myths also, and the\nbelief in them; also a Hecate, Galat\u00e6a, Glaucus\u2014four epics, besides\ncomedies, tragedies, iambics, choriambics, elegies, hymns, epigrams\nseventy-three\u2014and of these last alone can we say that they are in any\ndegree readable; and they are courtly, far-fetched, neat, and that is\nall.  Six hymns remain, and a few fragments of the elegies: but the most\nfamous elegy, on Berenice\u2019s hair, is preserved to us only in a Latin\nparaphrase of Catullus.  It is curious, as the earliest instance we have\nof genuinely ungenuine Court poetry, and of the complimentary lie which\ndoes not even pretend to be true; the flattery which will not take the\ntrouble to prevent your seeing that it is laughing in your face.\n\nBerenice the queen, on Ptolemy\u2019s departure to the wars, vows her\nbeautiful tresses to her favourite goddess, as the price of her husband\u2019s\nsafe return; and duly pays her vow.  The hair is hung up in the temple:\nin a day or two after it has vanished.  Dire is the wrath of Ptolemy, the\nconsternation of the priests, the scandal to religion; when Conon, the\ncourt-astronomer, luckily searching the heavens, finds the missing\ntresses in an utterly unexpected place\u2014as a new constellation of stars,\nwhich to this day bears the title of Coma Berenices.  It is so convenient\nto believe the fact, that everybody believes it accordingly; and\nCallimachus writes an elegy thereon, in which the constellified, or\nindeed deified tresses, address in most melodious and highly-finished\nGreek, bedizened with concetto on concetto, that fair and sacred head\nwhereon they grew, to be shorn from which is so dire a sorrow, that\napotheosis itself can hardly reconcile them to the parting.\n\nWorthy, was not all this, of the descendants of the men who fought at\nMarathon and Thermopyl\u00e6?  The old Greek civilisation was rotting swiftly\ndown; while a fire of God was preparing, slowly and dimly, in that\nunnoticed Italian town of Rome, which was destined to burn up that dead\nworld, and all its works.\n\nCallimachus\u2019s hymns, those may read who list.  They are highly finished\nenough; the work of a man who knew thoroughly what sort of article he\nintended to make, and what were the most approved methods of making it.\nCurious and cumbrous mythological lore comes out in every other line.\nThe smartness, the fine epithets, the recondite conceits, the bits of\neffect, are beyond all praise; but as for one spark of life, of poetry,\nof real belief, you will find none; not even in that famous Lavacrum\nPalladis which Angelo Poliziano thought worth translating into Latin\nelegiacs, about the same time that the learned Florentine, Antonio Maria\nSalviano, found Berenice\u2019s Hair worthy to be paraphrased back from\nCatullus\u2019 Latin into Greek, to give the world some faint notion of the\ninestimable and incomparable original.  They must have had much time on\ntheir hands.  But at the Revival of Letters, as was to be expected, all\nworks of the ancients, good and bad, were devoured alike with youthful\neagerness by the Medicis and the Popes; and it was not, we shall see, for\nmore than one century after, that men\u2019s taste got sufficiently matured to\ndistinguish between Callimachus and the Homeric hymns, or between Plato\nand Proclus.  Yet Callimachus and his fellows had an effect on the world.\nHis writings, as well as those of Philetas, were the model on which Ovid,\nPropertius, Tibullus, formed themselves.\n\nAnd so I leave him, with two hints.  If any one wishes to see the justice\nof my censure, let him read one of the Alexandrian hymns, and immediately\nafter it, one of those glorious old Homeric hymns to the very same\ndeities; let him contrast the insincere and fulsome idolatry of\nCallimachus with the reverent, simple and manful anthropomorphism of the\nHomerist\u2014and let him form his own judgment.\n\nThe other hint is this.  If Callimachus, the founder of Alexandrian\nliterature, be such as he is, what are his pupils likely to become, at\nleast without some infusion of healthier blood, such as in the case of\nhis Roman imitators produced a new and not altogether ignoble school?\n\nOf Lycophron, the fellow-grammarian and poet of Callimachus, we have\nnothing left but the Cassandra, a long iambic poem, stuffed with\ntraditionary learning, and so obscure, that it obtained for him the\nsurname of \u03c3\u03ba\u03bf\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd\u03cc\u03c2, the dark one.  I have tried in vain to read it:\nyou, if you will, may do the same.\n\nPhiletas, the remaining member of the Alexandrian Triad, seems to have\nbeen a more simple, genial, and graceful spirit than the other two, to\nwhom he was accordingly esteemed inferior.  Only a few fragments are\nleft; but he was not altogether without his influence, for he was, as I\nhave just said, one of the models on which Propertius and Ovid formed\nthemselves; and some, indeed, call him the Father of the Latin elegy,\nwith its terseness, grace, and clear epigrammatic form of thought, and,\ntherefore, in a great degree, of our modern eighteenth century poets; not\na useless excellence, seeing that it is, on the whole, good for him who\nwrites to see clearly what he wants to say, and to be able to make his\nreaders see it clearly also.  And yet one natural strain is heard amid\nall this artificial jingle\u2014that of Theocritus.  It is not altogether\nAlexandrian.  Its sweetest notes were learnt amid the chestnut groves and\norchards, the volcanic glens and sunny pastures of Sicily; but the\nintercourse, between the courts of Hiero and the Ptolemies seems to have\nbeen continual.  Poets and philosophers moved freely from one to the\nother, and found a like atmosphere in both; and in one of Theocritus\u2019\nidyls, two Sicilian gentlemen, crossed in love, agree to sail for\nAlexandria, and volunteer into the army of the great and good king\nPtolemy, of whom a sketch is given worth reading; as a man noble,\ngenerous, and stately, \u201cknowing well who loves him, and still better who\nloves him not.\u201d  He has another encomium on Ptolemy, more laboured,\nthough not less interesting: but the real value of Theocritus lies in his\npower of landscape-painting.\n\nOne can well conceive the delight which his idyls must have given to\nthose dusty Alexandrians, pent up forever between sea and sand-hills,\ndrinking the tank-water, and never hearing the sound of a running\nstream\u2014whirling, too, forever, in all the bustle and intrigue of a great\ncommercial and literary city.  Refreshing indeed it must have been to\nthem to hear of those simple joys and simple sorrows of the Sicilian\nshepherd, in a land where toil was but exercise, and mere existence was\nenjoyment.  To them, and to us also.  I believe Theocritus is one of the\npoets who will never die.  He sees men and things, in his own light way,\ntruly; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless\ntouches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that\ngorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian\u2019s pictures; with still\nsunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the\nsunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping\nfrom the orchard bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the\ncistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under\nthe dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some\n\n               Grot nymph-haunted,\n   Garlanded over with vine, and acanthus, and clambering roses,\n   Cool in the fierce still noon, where the streams glance clear in the\n   moss-beds;\n\nand here and there, beyond the braes and meads, blue glimpses of the\nfar-off summer sea; and all this told in a language and a metre which\nshapes itself almost unconsciously, wave after wave, into the most\nluscious song.  Doubt not that many a soul then, was the simpler, and\npurer, and better, for reading the sweet singer of Syracuse.  He has his\nimmoralities; but they are the immoralities of his age: his naturalness,\nhis sunny calm and cheerfulness, are all his own.\n\nAnd now, to leave the poets, and speak of those grammarians to whose\ncorrections we owe, I suppose, the texts of the Greek poets as they now\nstand.  They seem to have set to work at their task methodically enough,\nunder the direction of their most literary monarch, Ptolemy Philadelphus.\nAlexander the \u00c6tolian collected and revised the tragedies, Lycophron the\ncomedies, Zenodotus the poems of Homer, and the other poets of the Epic\ncycle, now lost to us.  Whether Homer prospered under all his expungings,\nalterations, and transpositions\u2014whether, in fact, he did not treat Homer\nvery much as Bentley wanted to treat Milton, is a suspicion which one has\na right to entertain, though it is long past the possibility of proof.\nLet that be as it may, the critical business grew and prospered.\nAristophanes of Byzantium wrote glossaries and grammars, collected\neditions of Plato and Aristotle, \u00e6sthetic disquisitions on Homer\u2014one\nwishes they were preserved, for the sake of the jest, that one might have\nseen an Alexandrian cockney\u2019s views of Achilles and Ulysses!  Moreover,\nin a hapless moment, at least for us moderns, he invented Greek accents;\nthereby, I fear, so complicating and confusing our notions of Greek\nrhythm, that we shall never, to the end of time, be able to guess what\nany Greek verse, saving the old Homeric Hexameter, sounded like.  After a\nwhile, too, the pedants, according to their wont, began quarrelling about\ntheir accents and their recessions.  Moreover, there was a rival school\nat Pergamus where the fame of Crates all but equalled the Egyptian fame\nof Aristarchus.  Insolent!  What right had an Asiatic to know anything?\nSo Aristarchus flew furiously on Crates, being a man of plain common\nsense, who felt a correct reading a far more important thing than any of\nCrates\u2019s illustrations, \u00e6sthetic, historical, or mythological; a\npreference not yet quite extinct, in one, at least, of our Universities.\n\u201cSir,\u201d said a clever Cambridge Tutor to a philosophically inclined\nfreshman, \u201cremember, that our business is to translate Plato correctly,\nnot to discover his meaning.\u201d  And, paradoxical as it may seem, he was\nright.  Let us first have accuracy, the merest mechanical accuracy, in\nevery branch of knowledge.  Let us know what the thing is which we are\nlooking at.  Let us know the exact words an author uses.  Let us get at\nthe exact value of each word by that severe induction of which Buttmann\nand the great Germans have set such noble examples; and then, and not\ntill then, we may begin to talk about philosophy, and \u00e6sthetics, and the\nrest.  Very Probably Aristarchus was right in his dislike of Crates\u2019s\npreference of what he called criticism, to grammar.  Very probably he\nconnected it with the other object of his especial hatred, that fashion\nof interpreting Homer allegorically, which was springing up in his time,\nand which afterwards under the Neoplatonists rose to a frantic height,\nand helped to destroy in them, not only their power of sound judgment,\nand of asking each thing patiently what it was, but also any real\nreverence for, or understanding of, the very authors over whom they\ndeclaimed and sentimentalised.\n\nYes\u2014the Cambridge Tutor was right.  Before you can tell what a man means,\nyou must have patience to find out what he says.  So far from wishing our\ngrammatical and philological education to be less severe than it is, I\nthink it is not severe enough.  In an age like this\u2014an age of lectures,\nand of popular literature, and of self-culture, too often random and\ncapricious, however earnest, we cannot be too careful in asking\nourselves, in compelling others to ask themselves, the meaning of every\nword which they use, of every word which they read; in assuring them,\nwhether they will believe us or not, that the moral, as well as the\nintellectual culture, acquired by translating accurately one dialogue of\nPlato, by making out thoroughly the sense of one chapter of a standard\nauthor, is greater than they will get from skimming whole folios of\nSchlegelian \u00e6sthetics, resumes, histories of philosophy, and the like\nsecond-hand information, or attending seven lectures a-week till their\nlives\u2019 end.   _It is better to know one thing_, _than to know about ten\nthousand things_.  I cannot help feeling painfully, after reading those\nmost interesting Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, that the especial\ndanger of this time is intellectual sciolism, vagueness, sentimental\neclecticism\u2014and feeling, too, as Socrates of old believed, that\nintellectual vagueness and shallowness, however glib, and grand, and\neloquent it may seem, is inevitably the parent of a moral vagueness and\nshallowness, which may leave our age as it left the later Greeks, without\nan absolute standard of right or of truth, till it tries to escape from\nits own scepticism, as the later Neoplatonists did, by plunging\ndesperately into any fetish-worshipping superstition which holds out to\nits wearied and yet impatient intellect, the bait of decisions already\nmade for it, of objects of admiration already formed and systematised.\n\nTherefore let us honour the grammarian in his place; and, among others,\nthese old grammarians of Alexandria; only being sure that as soon as any\nman begins, as they did, displaying himself peacock-fashion, boasting of\nhis science as the great pursuit of humanity, and insulting his\nfellow-craftsmen, he becomes, ipso facto, unable to discover any more\ntruth for us, having put on a habit of mind to which induction is\nimpossible; and is thenceforth to be passed by with a kindly but a\npitying smile.  And so, indeed, it happened with these quarrelsome\nAlexandrian grammarians, as it did with the Casaubons and Scaligers and\nDaciers of the last two centuries.  As soon as they began quarrelling\nthey lost the power of discovering.  The want of the inductive faculty in\ntheir attempts at philology is utterly ludicrous.  Most of their\nderivations of words are about on a par with Jacob B\u00f6hmen\u2019s etymology of\nsulphur, wherein he makes _sul_, if I recollect right, signify some\nactive principle of combustion, and _phur_ the passive one.  It was left\nfor more patient and less noisy men, like Grimm, Bopp, and Buttmann, to\nfound a science of philology, to discover for us those great laws which\nconnect modern philology with history, ethnology, physiology, and with\nthe very deepest questions of theology itself.  And in the meanwhile,\nthese Alexandrians\u2019 worthless criticism has been utterly swept away;\nwhile their real work, their accurate editions of the classics, remain to\nus as a precious heritage.  So it is throughout history: nothing dies\nwhich is worthy to live.  The wheat is surely gathered into the garner,\nthe chaff is burnt up by that eternal fire which, happily for this\nuniverse, cannot be quenched by any art of man, but goes on forever,\ndevouring without indulgence all the folly and the falsehood of the\nworld.\n\nAs yet you have heard nothing of the metaphysical schools of Alexandria;\nfor as yet none have existed, in the modern acceptation of that word.\nIndeed, I am not sure that I must not tell you frankly, that none ever\nexisted at all in Alexandria, in that same modern acceptation.  Ritter, I\nthink, it is who complains na\u00efvely enough, that the Alexandrian\nNeoplatonists had a bad habit, which grew on them more and more as the\nyears rolled on, of mixing up philosophy with theology, and so defiling,\nor at all events colouring, its pure transparency.  There is no denying\nthe imputation, as I shall show at greater length in my next Lecture.\nBut one would have thought, looking back through history, that the\nAlexandrians were not the only philosophers guilty of this shameful act\nof syncretism.  Plato, one would have thought, was as great a sinner as\nthey.  So were the Hindoos.  In spite of all their logical and\nmetaphysical acuteness, they were, you will find, unable to get rid of\nthe notion that theological inquiries concerning Brahma, Atma, Creeshna,\nwere indissolubly mixed up with that same logic and metaphysic.  The\nParsees could not separate questions about Ahriman and Ormuzd from Kant\u2019s\nthree great philosophic problems: What is Man?\u2014What may be known?\u2014What\nshould be done?  Neither, indeed, could the earlier Greek sages.  Not one\nof them, of any school whatsoever\u2014from the semi-mythic Seven Sages to\nPlato and Aristotle\u2014but finds it necessary to consider not in passing,\nbut as the great object of research, questions concerning the\ngods:\u2014whether they are real or not; one or many; personal or impersonal;\ncosmic, and parts of the universe, or organisers and rulers of it; in\nrelation to man, or without relation to him.  Even in those who flatly\ndeny the existence of the gods, even in Lucretius himself, these\nquestions have to be considered, before the question, What is man? can\nget any solution at all.  On the answer given to them is found to depend\nintimately the answer to the question, What is the immaterial part of\nman?  Is it a part of nature, or of something above nature?  Has he an\nimmaterial part at all?\u2014in one word, Is a human metaphysic possible at\nall?  So it was with the Greek philosophers of old, even, as Asclepius\nand Ammonius say, with Aristotle himself.  \u201cThe object of Aristotle\u2019s\nmetaphysic,\u201d one of them says, \u201cis theological.  Herein Aristotle\ntheologises.\u201d  And there is no denying the assertion.  We must not then\nbe hard on the Neoplatonists, as if they were the first to mix things\nseparate from the foundation of the world.  I do not say that theology\nand metaphysic are separate studies.  That is to be ascertained only by\nseeing some one separate them.  And when I see them separated, I shall\nbelieve them separable.  Only the separation must not be produced by the\nsimple expedient of denying the existence of either one of them, or at\nleast of ignoring the existence of one steadily during the study of the\nother.  If they can be parted without injury to each other, let them be\nparted; and till then let us suspend hard judgments on the Alexandrian\nschool of metaphysic, and also on the schools of that curious people the\nJews, who had at this period a steadily increasing influence on the\nthought, as well as on the commercial prosperity, of Alexandria.\n\nYou must not suppose, in the meanwhile, that the philosophers whom the\nPtolemies collected (as they would have any other marketable article) by\nliberal offers of pay and patronage, were such men as the old Seven Sages\nof Greece, or as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  In these three last\nindeed, Greek thought reached not merely its greatest height, but the\nedge of a precipice, down which it rolled headlong after their decease.\nThe intellectual defects of the Greek mind, of which I have already\nspoken, were doubtless one great cause of this decay: but, to my mind,\nmoral causes had still more to do with it.  The more cultivated Greek\nstates, to judge from the writings of Plato, had not been an\nover-righteous people during the generation in which he lived.  And in\nthe generations which followed, they became an altogether wicked people;\nimmoral, unbelieving, hating good, and delighting in all which was evil.\nAnd it was in consequence of these very sins of theirs, as I think, that\nthe old Hellenic race began to die out physically, and population\nthroughout Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of\nthe Ach\u00e6an league.  The facts are well known; and foul enough they are.\nWhen the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful.  The eagles\nwere gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed from\nthe face of God\u2019s earth.  And at the time of which I now speak, the signs\nof approaching death were fearfully apparent.  Hapless and hopeless\nenough were the clique of men out of whom the first two Ptolemies hoped\nto form a school of philosophy; men certainly clever enough, and amusing\nwithal, who might give the kings of Egypt many a shrewd lesson in\nking-craft, and the ways of this world, and the art of profiting by the\nfolly of fools, and the selfishness of the selfish; or who might amuse\nthem, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and repartees, and battles of\nlogic; \u201chow one thing cannot be predicated of another,\u201d or \u201chow the wise\nman is not only to overcome every misfortune, but not even to feel it,\u201d\nand other such mighty questions, which in those days hid that deep\nunbelief in any truth whatsoever which was spreading fast over the minds\nof men.  Such word-splitters were Stilpo and Diodorus, the slayer and the\nslain.  They were of the Megaran school, and were named Dialectics; and\nalso, with more truth, Eristics, or quarrellers.  Their clique had\nprofessed to follow Zeno and Socrates in declaring the instability of\nsensible presumptions and conclusions, in preaching an absolute and\neternal Being.  But there was this deep gulf between them and Socrates;\nthat while Socrates professed to be seeking for the Absolute and Eternal,\nfor that which is, they were content with affirming that it exists.  With\nhim, as with the older sages, philosophy was a search for truth.  With\nthem it was a scheme of doctrines to be defended.  And the dialectic on\nwhich they prided themselves so much, differed from his accordingly.  He\nused it inductively, to seek out, under the notions and conceptions of\nthe mind, certain absolute truths and laws of which they were only the\nembodiment.  Words and thought were to him a field for careful and\nreverent induction, as the phenomena of nature are to us the disciples of\nBacon.  But with these hapless Megarans, who thought that they had found\nthat for which Socrates professed only to seek dimly and afar off, and\nhad got it safe in a dogma, preserved as it were in spirits, and put by\nin a museum, the great use of dialectic was to confute opponents.\nDelight in their own subtlety grew on them, the worship not of objective\ntruth, but of the forms of the intellect whereby it may be demonstrated;\ntill they became the veriest word-splitters, rivals of the old sophists\nwhom their master had attacked, and justified too often Aristophanes\u2019\ncalumny, which confounded Socrates with his opponents, as a man whose aim\nwas to make the worse appear the better reason.\n\nWe have here, in both parties, all the marks of an age of exhaustion, of\nscepticism, of despair about finding any real truth.  No wonder that they\nwere superseded by the Pyrrhonists, who doubted all things, and by the\nAcademy, which prided itself on setting up each thing to knock it down\nagain; and so by prudent and well-bred and tolerant qualifying of every\nassertion, neither affirming too much, nor denying too much, keep their\nminds in a wholesome\u2014or unwholesome\u2014state of equilibrium, as stagnant\npools are kept, that everything may have free toleration to rot\nundisturbed.\n\nThese hapless caricaturists of the dialectic of Plato, and the logic of\nAristotle, careless of any vital principles or real results, ready enough\nto use fallacies each for their own party, and openly proud of their\nsuccess in doing so, were assisted by worthy compeers of an outwardly\nopposite tone of thought, the Cyrenaics, Theodorus and Hegesias.  With\ntheir clique, as with their master Aristippus, the senses were the only\navenues to knowledge; man was the measure of all things; and \u201chappiness\nour being\u2019s end and aim.\u201d  Theodorus was surnamed the Atheist; and, it\nseems, not without good reason; for he taught that there was no absolute\nor eternal difference between good and evil; nothing really disgraceful\nin crimes; no divine ground for laws, which according to him had been\ninvented by men to prevent fools from making themselves disagreeable; on\nwhich theory, laws must be confessed to have been in all ages somewhat of\na failure.  He seems to have been, like his master, an impudent\nlight-hearted fellow, who took life easily enough, laughed at patriotism,\nand all other high-flown notions, boasted that the world was his country,\nand was no doubt excellent after-dinner company for the great king.\nHegesias, his fellow Cyrenaic, was a man of a darker and more melancholic\ntemperament; and while Theodorus contented himself with preaching a\ncomfortable selfishness, and obtaining pleasure, made it rather his study\nto avoid pain.  Doubtless both their theories were popular enough at\nAlexandria, as they were in France during the analogous period, the\nSi\u00e8cle Louis Quinze.  The \u201cContrat Social,\u201d and the rest of their\ndoctrines, moral and metaphysical, will always have their admirers on\nearth, as long as that variety of the human species exists for whose\nespecial behoof Theodorus held that laws were made; and the whole form of\nthought met with great approbation in after years at Rome, where Epicurus\ncarried it to its highest perfection.  After that, under the pressure of\na train of rather severe lessons, which Gibbon has detailed in his\n\u201cDecline and Fall of the Roman Empire,\u201d little or nothing was heard of\nit, save _sotto voce_, perhaps, at the Papal courts of the sixteenth\ncentury.  To revive it publicly, or at least as much of it as could be\nborne by a world now for seventeen centuries Christian, was the glory of\nthe eighteenth century.  The moral scheme of Theodorus has now nearly\nvanished among us, at least as a confessed creed; and, in spite of the\nauthority of Mr. Locke\u2019s great and good name, his metaphysical scheme is\nshowing signs of a like approaching disappearance.  Let us hope that it\nmay be a speedy one; for if the senses be the only avenues to knowledge;\nif man be the measure of all things; and if law have not, as Hooker says,\nher fount and home in the very bosom of God himself, then was Homer\u2019s\nZeus right in declaring man to be \u201cthe most wretched of all the beasts of\nthe field.\u201d\n\nAnd yet one cannot help looking with a sort of awe (I dare not call it\nrespect) at that melancholic faithless Hegesias.  Doubtless he, like his\ncompeers, and indeed all Alexandria for three hundred years, cultivated\nphilosophy with no more real purpose than it was cultivated by the\ngraceless _beaux-esprits_ of Louis XV.\u2019s court, and with as little\npractical effect on morality; but of this Hegesias alone it stands\nwritten, that his teaching actually made men do something; and moreover,\ndo the most solemn and important thing which any man can do, excepting\nalways doing right.  I must confess, however, that the result of his\nteaching took so unexpected a form, that the reigning Ptolemy, apparently\nPhiladelphus, had to interfere with the sacred right of every man to talk\nas much nonsense as he likes, and forbade Hegesias to teach at\nAlexandria.  For Hegesias, a Cyrenaic like Theodorus, but a rather more\nmorose pedant than that saucy and happy scoffer, having discovered that\nthe great end of man was to avoid pain, also discovered (his digestion\nbeing probably in a disordered state) that there was so much more pain\nthan pleasure in the world, as to make it a thoroughly disagreeable\nplace, of which man was well rid at any price.  Whereon he wrote a book\ncalled, \u1f08\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03c1\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u1ff6\u03bd, in which a man who had determined to starve himself,\npreached the miseries of human life, and the blessings of death, with\nsuch overpowering force, that the book actually drove many persons to\ncommit suicide, and escape from a world which was not fit to dwell in.  A\nfearful proof of how rotten the state of society was becoming, how\ndesperate the minds of men, during those frightful centuries which\nimmediately preceded the Christian era, and how fast was approaching that\ndark chaos of unbelief and unrighteousness, which Paul of Tarsus so\nanalyses and describes in the first chapter of his Epistle to the\nRomans\u2014when the old light was lost, the old faiths extinct, the old\nreverence for the laws of family and national life, destroyed, yea even\nthe natural instincts themselves perverted; that chaos whose darkness\nJuvenal, and Petronius, and Tacitus have proved, in their fearful pages,\nnot to have been exaggerated by the more compassionate though more\nrighteous Jew.\n\nAnd now observe, that this selfishness\u2014this wholesome state of\nequilibrium\u2014this philosophic calm, which is really only a lazy pride,\nwas, as far as we can tell, the main object of all the schools from the\ntime of Alexander to the Christian era.  We know very little of those\nSceptics, Cynics, Epicureans, Academics, Peripatetics, Stoics, of whom\nthere has been so much talk, except at second-hand, through the Romans,\nfrom whom Stoicism in after ages received a new and not ignoble life.\nBut this we do know of the later sets, that they gradually gave up the\nsearch for truth, and propounded to themselves as the great type for a\nphilosopher, How shall a man save his own soul from this evil world? They\nmay have been right; it may have been the best thing to think about in\nthose exhausted and decaying times: but it was a question of ethics, not\nof philosophy, in the sense which the old Greek sages put on that latter\nword.  Their object was, not to get at the laws of all things, but to\nfortify themselves against all things, each according to his scheme, and\nso to be self-sufficient and alone.  Even in the Stoics, who boldly and\nrighteously asserted an immutable morality, this was the leading\nconception.  As has been well said of them:\n\n\u201cIf we reflect how deeply the feeling of an intercourse between men and a\ndivine race superior to themselves had worked itself into the Greek\ncharacter\u2014what a number of fables, some beautiful, some impure, it had\nimpregnated and procured credence for\u2014how it sustained every form of\npolity and every system of laws, we may imagine what the effects must\nhave been of its disappearance.  If it is possible for any man, it was\nnot, certainly, possible for a Greek, to feel himself connected by any\nreal bonds with his fellow-creatures around him, while he felt himself\nutterly separated from any being above his fellow-creatures.  But the\nsense of that isolation would affect different minds very differently.\nIt drove the Epicurean to consider how he might make a world in which he\nshould live comfortably, without distracting visions of the past and\nfuture, and the dread of those upper powers who no longer awakened in him\nany feelings of sympathy.  It drove Zeno the Stoic to consider whether a\nman may not find enough in himself to satisfy him, though what is beyond\nhim be ever so unfriendly. . . . We may trace in the productions which\nare attributed to Zone a very clear indication of the feeling which was\nat work in his mind.  He undertook, for instance, among other tasks, to\nanswer Plato\u2019s \u2018Republic.\u2019  The truth that a man is a political being,\nwhich informs and pervades that book, was one which must have been\nparticularly harassing to his mind, and which he felt must be got rid of,\nbefore he could hope to assert his doctrine of a man\u2019s solitary dignity.\u201d\n\nWoe to the nation or the society in which this individualising and\nseparating process is going on in the human mind!  Whether it take the\nform of a religion or of a philosophy, it is at once the sign and the\ncause of senility, decay, and death.  If man begins to forget that he is\na social being, a member of a body, and that the only truths which can\navail him anything, the only truths which are worthy objects of his\nphilosophical search, are those which are equally true for every man,\nwhich will equally avail every man, which he must proclaim, as far as he\ncan, to every man, from the proudest sage to the meanest outcast, he\nenters, I believe, into a lie, and helps forward the dissolution of that\nsociety of which he is a member.  I care little whether what he holds be\ntrue or not.  If it be true, he has made it a lie by appropriating it\nproudly and selfishly to himself, and by excluding others from it.  He\nhas darkened his own power of vision by that act of self-appropriation,\nso that even if he sees a truth, he can only see it refractedly,\ndiscoloured by the medium of his own private likes and dislikes, and\nfulfils that great and truly philosophic law, that he who loveth not his\nbrother is in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth.  And so it\nbefell those old Greek schools.  It is out of our path to follow them to\nItaly, where sturdy old Roman patriots cursed them, and with good reason,\nas corrupting the morals of the young.  Our business is with Alexandria;\nand there, certainly, they did nothing for the elevation of humanity.\nWhat culture they may have given, probably helped to make the\nAlexandrians, what C\u00e6sar calls them, the most ingenious of all nations:\nbut righteous or valiant men it did not make them.  When, after the three\ngreat reigns of Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes, the race of the\nPtolemies began to wear itself out, Alexandria fell morally, as its\nsovereigns fell; and during a miserable and shameful decline of a hundred\nand eighty years, sophists wrangled, pedants fought over accents and\nreadings with the true _odium gammaticum_, and kings plunged deeper and\ndeeper into the abysses of luxury and incest, laziness and cruelty, till\nthe flood came, and swept them all away.  Cleopatra, the Helen of Egypt,\nbetrayed her country to the Roman; and thenceforth the Alexandrians\nbecame slaves in all but name.\n\nAnd now that Alexandria has become a tributary province, is it to share\nthe usual lot of enslaved countries and lose all originality and vigour\nof thought?  Not so.  From this point, strangely enough, it begins to\nhave a philosophy of its own.  Hitherto it has been importing Greek\nthought into Egypt and Syria, even to the furthest boundaries of Persia;\nand the whole East has become Greek: but it has received little in\nreturn.  The Indian Gymnosophists, or Brahmins, had little or no effect\non Greek philosophy, except in the case of Pyrrho: the Persian Dualism\nstill less.  The Egyptian symbolic nature-worship had been too gross to\nbe regarded by the cultivated Alexandrian as anything but a barbaric\nsuperstition.  One eastern nation had intermingled closely with the\nMacedonian race, and from it Alexandrian thought received a new impulse.\n\nI mentioned in my first lecture the conciliatory policy which the\nPtolemies had pursued toward the Jews.  Soter had not only allowed but\nencouraged them to settle in Alexandria and Egypt, granting them the same\npolitical privileges with the Macedonians and other Greeks.  Soon they\nbuilt themselves a temple there, in obedience to some supposed prophecy\nin their sacred writings, which seems most probably to have been a wilful\ninterpolation.  Whatsoever value we may attach to the various myths\nconcerning the translation of their Scriptures into Greek, there can be\nno doubt that they were translated in the reign of Soter, and that the\nexceedingly valuable Septuagint version is the work of that period.\nMoreover, their numbers in Alexandria were very great.  When Amrou took\nConstantinople in A.D. 640, there were 40,000 Jews in it; and their\nnumbers during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, before their temporary\nexpulsion by Cyril about 412, were probably greater; and Egypt altogether\nis said to have contained 200,000 Jews.  They had schools there, which\nwere so esteemed by their whole nation throughout the East, that the\nAlexandrian Rabbis, the Light of Israel, as they were called, may be\nfairly considered as the centre of Jewish thought and learning for\nseveral centuries.\n\nWe are accustomed, and not without reason, to think with some contempt of\nthese old Rabbis.  Rabbinism, Cabbalism, are become by-words in the\nmouths of men.  It may be instructive for us\u2014it is certainly necessary\nfor us, if we wish to understand Alexandria\u2014to examine a little how they\nbecame so fallen.\n\nTheir philosophy took its stand, as you all know, on certain ancient\nbooks of their people; histories, laws, poems, philosophical treatises,\nwhich all have one element peculiar to themselves, namely, the assertion\nof a living personal Ruler and Teacher, not merely of the Jewish race,\nbut of all the nations of the earth.  After the return of their race from\nBabylon, their own records give abundant evidence that this strange\npeople became the most exclusive and sectarian which the world ever saw.\nInto the causes of that exclusiveness I will not now enter; suffice it to\nsay, that it was pardonable enough in a people asserting Monotheism in\nthe midst of idolatrous nations, and who knew, from experience even more\nbitter than that which taught Plato and Socrates, how directly all those\npopular idolatries led to every form of baseness and immorality.  But we\nmay trace in them, from the date of their return from Babylon, especially\nfrom their settlement in Alexandria, a singular change of opinion.  In\nproportion as they began to deny that their unseen personal Ruler had\nanything to do with the Gentiles\u2014the nations of the earth, as they called\nthem\u2014in proportion as they considered themselves as His only subjects\u2014or\nrather, Him and His guidance as their own private property\u2014exactly in\nthat proportion they began to lose all living or practical belief that He\ndid guide them.  He became a being of the past; one who had taught and\ngoverned their forefathers in old times: not one who was teaching and\ngoverning them now.  I beg you to pay attention to this curious result;\nbecause you will see, I think, the very same thing occurring in two other\nAlexandrian schools, of which I shall speak hereafter.\n\nThe result to these Rabbis was, that the inspired books which spoke of\nthis Divine guidance and government became objects of superstitious\nreverence, just in proportion as they lost all understanding of their\nreal value and meaning.  Nevertheless, this too produced good results;\nfor the greatest possible care was taken to fix the Canon of these books;\nto settle, as far as possible, the exact time at which the Divine\nguidance was supposed to have ceased; after which it was impious to claim\na Divine teaching; when their sages were left to themselves, as they\nfancied, with a complete body of knowledge, on which they were henceforth\nonly to comment.  Thus, whether or not they were right in supposing that\nthe Divine Teacher had ceased to teach and inspire them, they did\ninfinite service by marking out for us certain writers whom He had\ncertainly taught and inspired.  No doubt they were right in their sense\nof the awful change which had passed over their nation.  There was an\ninfinite difference between them and the old Hebrew writers.  They had\nlost something which those old prophets possessed.  I invite you to\nponder, each for himself, on the causes of this strange loss; bearing in\nmind that they lost their forefathers\u2019 heirloom, exactly in proportion as\nthey began to believe it to be their exclusive possession, and to deny\nother human beings any right to or share in it.  It may have been that\nthe light given to their forefathers had, as they thought, really\ndeparted.  It may have been, also, that the light was there all around\nthem still, as bright as ever, but that they would not open their eyes\nand behold it; or rather, could not open them, because selfishness and\npride had sealed them.  It may have been, that inspiration was still very\nnear _them_ too, if their spirits had been willing to receive it.  But of\nthe fact of the change there was no doubt.  For the old Hebrew seers were\nmen dealing with the loftiest and deepest laws: the Rabbis were shallow\npedants.  The old Hebrew seers were righteous and virtuous men: the\nRabbis became, in due time, some of the worst and wickedest men who ever\ntrod this earth.\n\nThus they too had their share in that downward career of pedantry which\nwe have seen characterise the whole past Alexandrine age.  They, like\nZenodotus and Aristarchus, were commentators, grammarians, sectarian\ndisputers: they were not thinkers or actors.  Their inspired books were\nto them no more the words of living human beings who had sought for the\nAbsolute Wisdom, and found it after many sins and doubts and sorrows.\nThe human writers became in their eyes the puppets and mouthpieces of\nsome magical influence, not the disciples of a living and loving person.\nThe book itself was, in their belief, not in any true sense inspired, but\nmagically dictated\u2014by what power they cared not to define.  His character\nwas unimportant to them, provided He had inspired no nation but their\nown.  But, thought they, if the words were dictated, each of them must\nhave some mysterious value.  And if each word had a mysterious value, why\nnot each letter?  And how could they set limits to that mysterious value?\nMight not these words, even rearrangements of the letters of them, be\nuseful in protecting them against the sorceries of the heathen, in\ndriving away those evil spirits, or evoking those good spirits, who,\nthough seldom mentioned in their early records, had after their return\nfrom Babylon begun to form an important part of their unseen world?  For\nas they had lost faith in the One Preserver of their race, they had\nfilled up the void by a ponderous demonology of innumerable preservers.\nThis process of thought was not confined to Alexandria.  Dr. Layard, in\nhis last book on Nineveh, gives some curious instances of its prevalence\namong them at an earlier period, well worth your careful study.  But it\nwas at Alexandria that the Jewish Cabbalism formed itself into a system.\nIt was there that the Jews learnt to become the jugglers and\nmagic-mongers of the whole Roman world, till Claudius had to expel them\nfrom Rome, as pests to rational and moral society.\n\nAnd yet, among these hapless pedants there lingered nobler thoughts and\nhopes.  They could not read the glorious heirlooms of their race without\nfinding in them records of antique greatness and virtue, of old\ndeliverances worked for their forefathers; and what seemed promises, too,\nthat that greatness should return.  The notion that those promises were\nconditional; that they expressed eternal moral laws, and declared the\nconsequences of obeying those laws, they had lost long ago.  By looking\non themselves as exclusively and arbitrarily favoured by Heaven, they\nwere ruining their own moral sense.  Things were not right or wrong to\nthem because Right was eternal and divine, and Wrong the transgression of\nthat eternal right.  How could that be?  For then the right things the\nGentiles seemed to do would be right and divine;\u2014and that supposition in\ntheir eyes was all but impious.  None could do right but themselves, for\nthey only knew the law of God.  So, right with them had no absolute or\nuniversal ground, but was reduced in their minds to the performance of\ncertain acts commanded exclusively to them\u2014a form of ethics which rapidly\nsank into the most petty and frivolous casuistry as to the outward\nperformance of those acts.  The sequel of those ethics is known to all\nthe world, in the spectacle of the most unrivalled religiosity, and\nscrupulous respectability, combined with a more utter absence of moral\nsense, in their most cultivated and learned men, than the world has ever\nbeheld before or since.\n\nIn such a state of mind it was impossible for them to look on their old\nprophets as true seers, beholding and applying eternal moral laws, and,\ntherefore, seeing the future in the present and in the past.  They must\nbe the mere utterers of an irreversible arbitrary fate; and that fate\nmust, of course, be favourable to their nation.  So now arose a school\nwho picked out from their old prophets every passage which could be made\nto predict their future glory, and a science which settled when that\nglory was to return.  By the arbitrary rules of criticism a prophetic day\nwas defined to mean a year; a week, seven years.  The most simple and\nhuman utterances were found to have recondite meanings relative to their\nfuture triumph over the heathens whom they cursed and hated.  If any of\nyou ever come across the popular Jewish interpretations of The Song of\nSolomon, you will there see the folly in which acute and learned men can\nindulge themselves when they have lost hold of the belief in anything\nreally absolute and eternal and moral, and have made Fate, and Time, and\nSelf, their real deities.  But this dream of a future restoration was in\nno wise ennobled, as far as we can see, with any desire for a moral\nrestoration.  They believed that a person would appear some day or other\nto deliver them.  Even they were happily preserved by their sacred books\nfrom the notion that deliverance was to be found for them, or for any\nman, in an abstraction or notion ending in -ation or -ality.  In justice\nto them it must be said, that they were too wise to believe that personal\nqualities, such as power, will, love, righteousness, could reside in any\nbut in a person, or be manifested except by a person.  And among the\nearlier of them the belief may have been, that the ancient unseen Teacher\nof their race would be their deliverer: but as they lost the thought of\nHim, the expected Deliverer became a mere human being: or rather not a\nhuman being; for as they lost their moral sense, they lost in the very\ndeepest meaning their humanity, and forgot what man was like till they\nlearned to look only for a conqueror; a manifestation of power, and not\nof goodness; a destroyer of the hated heathen, who was to establish them\nas the tyrant race of the whole earth.  On that fearful day on which, for\na moment, they cast away even that last dream, and cried, \u201cWe have no\nking but C\u00e6sar,\u201d they spoke the secret of their hearts.  It was a C\u00e6sar,\na Jewish C\u00e6sar, for whom they had been longing for centuries.  And if\nthey could not have such a deliverer, they would have none: they would\ntake up with the best embodiment of brute Titanic power which they could\nfind, and crucify the embodiment of Righteousness and Love.  Amid all the\nmetaphysical schools of Alexandria, I know none so deeply instructive as\nthat school of the Rabbis, \u201cthe glory of Israel.\u201d\n\nBut you will say: \u201cThis does not look like a school likely to regenerate\nAlexandrian thought.\u201d  True: and yet it did regenerate it, both for good\nand for evil; for these men had among them and preserved faithfully\nenough for all practical purposes, the old literature of their race; a\nliterature which I firmly believe, if I am to trust the experience of\n1900 years, is destined to explain all other literatures; because it has\nfirm hold of the one eternal root-idea which gives life, meaning, Divine\nsanction, to every germ or fragment of human truth which is in any of\nthem.  It did so, at least, in Alexandria for the Greek literature.\nAbout the Christian era, a cultivated Alexandrian Jew, a disciple of\nPlato and of Aristotle, did seem to himself to find in the sacred books\nof his nation that which agreed with the deepest discoveries of Greek\nphilosophy; which explained and corroborated them.  And his announcement\nof this fact, weak and defective as it was, had the most enormous and\nunexpected results.  The father of New Platonism was Philo the Jew.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE III.\nNEOPLATONISM.\n\n\nWE now approach the period in which Alexandria began to have a philosophy\nof its own\u2014to be, indeed, the leader of human thought for several\ncenturies.\n\nI shall enter on this branch of my subject with some fear and trembling;\nnot only on account of my own ignorance, but on account of the great\ndifficulty of handling it without trenching on certain controversial\nsubjects which are rightly and wisely forbidden here.  For there was not\none school of Metaphysic at Alexandria: there were two; which, during the\nwhole period of their existence, were in internecine struggle with each\nother, and yet mutually borrowing from each other; the Heathen, namely,\nand the Christian.  And you cannot contemplate, still less can you\nunderstand, the one without the other.  Some of late years have become\nall but unaware of the existence of that Christian school; and the word\nPhilosophy, on the authority of Gibbon, who, however excellent an\nauthority for facts, knew nothing about Philosophy, and cared less, has\nbeen used exclusively to express heathen thought; a misnomer which in\nAlexandria would have astonished Plotinus or Hypatia as much as it would\nClement or Origen.  I do not say that there is, or ought to be, a\nChristian Metaphysic.  I am speaking, as you know, merely as a historian,\ndealing with facts; and I say that there was one; as profound, as\nscientific, as severe, as that of the Pagan Neoplatonists; starting\nindeed, as I shall show hereafter, on many points from common ground with\ntheirs.  One can hardly doubt, I should fancy, that many parts of St.\nJohn\u2019s Gospel and Epistles, whatever view we may take of them, if they\nare to be called anything, are to be called metaphysic and philosophic.\nAnd one can no more doubt that before writing them he had studied Philo,\nand was expanding Philo\u2019s thought in the direction which seemed fit to\nhim, than we can doubt it of the earlier Neoplatonists.  The technical\nlanguage is often identical; so are the primary ideas from which he\nstarts, howsoever widely the conclusions may differ.  If Plotinus\nconsidered himself an intellectual disciple of Plato, so did Origen and\nClemens.  And I must, as I said before, speak of both, or of neither.  My\nonly hope of escaping delicate ground lies in the curious fact, that\nrightly or wrongly, the form in which Christianity presented itself to\nthe old Alexandrian thinkers was so utterly different from the popular\nconception of it in modern England, that one may very likely be able to\ntell what little one knows about it, almost without mentioning a single\ndoctrine which now influences the religious world.\n\nBut far greater is my fear, that to a modern British auditory, trained in\nthe school of Locke, much of ancient thought, heathen as well as\nChristian, may seem so utterly the product of the imagination, so utterly\nwithout any corresponding reality in the universe, as to look like mere\nunintelligible madness.  Still, I must try; only entreating my hearers to\nconsider, that how much soever we may honour Locke and his great Scotch\nfollowers, we are not bound to believe them either infallible, or\naltogether world-embracing; that there have been other methods than\ntheirs of conceiving the Unseen; that the common ground from which both\nChristian and heathen Alexandrians start, is not merely a private vagary\nof their own, but one which has been accepted undoubtingly, under so many\nvarious forms, by so many different races, as to give something of an\ninductive probability that it is not a mere dream, but may be a right and\ntrue instinct of the human mind.  I mean the belief that the things which\nwe see\u2014nature and all her phenomena\u2014are temporal, and born only to die;\nmere shadows of some unseen realities, from whom their laws and life are\nderived; while the eternal things which subsist without growth, decay, or\nchange, the only real, only truly existing things, in short, are certain\nthings which are not seen; inappreciable by sense, or understanding, or\nimagination, perceived only by the conscience and the reason.  And that,\nagain, the problem of philosophy, the highest good for man, that for the\nsake of which death were a gain, without which life is worthless, a\ndrudgery, a degradation, a failure, and a ruin, is to discover what those\nunseen eternal things are, to know them, possess them, be in harmony with\nthem, and thereby alone to rise to any real and solid power, or safety,\nor nobleness.  It is a strange dream.  But you will see that it is one\nwhich does not bear much upon \u201cpoints of controversy,\u201d any more than on\n\u201cLocke\u2019s philosophy;\u201d nevertheless, when we find this same strange dream\narising, apparently without intercommunion of thought, among the old\nHindoos, among the Greeks, among the Jews; and lastly, when we see it\nspringing again in the Middle Age, in the mind of the almost forgotten\nauthor of the \u201cDeutsche Theologie,\u201d and so becoming the parent, not\nmerely of Luther\u2019s deepest belief, or of the German mystic schools of the\nseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but of the great German Philosophy\nitself as developed by Kant, and Fichte, and Schelling, and Hegel, we\nmust at least confess it to be a popular delusion, if nothing better,\nvast enough and common enough to be worth a little patient investigation,\nwheresoever we may find it stirring the human mind.\n\nBut I have hope, still, that I may find sympathy and comprehension among\nsome, at least, of my audience, as I proceed to examine the ancient\nrealist schools of Alexandria, on account of their knowledge of the\nmodern realist schools of Germany.  For I cannot but see, that a\nrevulsion is taking place in the thoughts of our nation upon metaphysic\nsubjects, and that Scotland, as usual, is taking the lead therein.  That\nmost illustrious Scotchman, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, first vindicated the\ngreat German Realists from the vulgar misconceptions about them which\nwere so common at the beginning of this century, and brought the minds of\nstudious men to a more just appreciation of the philosophic severity, the\nmoral grandeur, of such thinkers as Emmanuel Kant, and Gottlieb Fichte.\nTo another Scotch gentleman, who, I believe, has honoured me by his\npresence here to-night, we owe most valuable translations of some of\nFichte\u2019s works; to be followed, I trust, by more.  And though, as a\nhumble disciple of Bacon, I cannot but think that the method both of Kant\nand Fichte possesses somewhat of the same inherent defect as the method\nof the Neoplatonist school, yet I should be most unfair did I not express\nmy deep obligations to them, and advise all those to study them\ncarefully, who wish to gain a clear conception either of the old\nAlexandrian schools, or of those intellectual movements which are\nagitating the modern mind, and which will, I doubt not, issue in a\nclearer light, and in a nobler life, if not for us, yet still for our\nchildren\u2019s children for ever.\n\nThe name of Philo the Jew is now all but forgotten among us.  He was\nlaughed out of sight during the last century, as a dreamer and an\nallegorist, who tried eclectically to patch together Plato and Moses.\nThe present age, however, is rapidly beginning to suspect that all who\nthought before the eighteenth century were not altogether either fools or\nimpostors; old wisdom is obtaining a fairer hearing day by day, and is\nfound not to be so contradictory to new wisdom as was supposed.  We are\nbeginning, too, to be more inclined to justify Providence, by believing\nthat lies are by their very nature impotent and doomed to die; that\neverything which has had any great or permanent influence on the human\nmind, must have in it some germ of eternal truth; and setting ourselves\nto separate that germ of truth from the mistakes which may have distorted\nand overlaid it.  Let us believe, or at least hope, the same for a few\nminutes, of Philo, and try to find out what was the secret of his power,\nwhat the secret of his weakness.\n\nFirst: I cannot think that he had to treat his own sacred books unfairly,\nto make them agree with the root-idea of Socrates and Plato.  Socrates\nand Plato acknowledged a Divine teacher of the human spirit; that was the\nground of their philosophy.  So did the literature of the Jews.  Socrates\nand Plato, with all the Greek sages till the Sophistic era, held that the\nobject of philosophy was the search after that which truly exists: that\nhe who found that, found wisdom: Philo\u2019s books taught him the same truth:\nbut they taught him also, that the search for wisdom was not merely the\nsearch for that which is, but for Him who is; not for a thing, but for a\nperson.  I do not mean that Plato and the elder Greeks had not that\nobject also in view; for I have said already that Theology was with them\nthe ultimate object of all metaphysic science: but I do think that they\nsaw it infinitely less clearly than the old Jewish sages.  Those sages\nwere utterly unable to conceive of an absolute truth, except as residing\nin an absolutely true person; of absolute wisdom, except in an absolutely\nwise person; of an absolute order and law, except in a lawgiver; of an\nabsolute good, except in an absolutely good person: any more than either\nthey or we can conceive of an absolute love, except in an absolutely\nloving person.  I say boldly, that I think them right, on all grounds of\nBaconian induction.  For all these qualities are only known to us as\nexhibited in persons; and if we believe them to have any absolute and\neternal existence at all, to be objective, and independent of us, and the\nmomentary moods and sentiments of our own mind, they must exist in some\nabsolute and eternal person, or they are mere notions, abstractions,\nwords, which have no counterparts.\n\nBut here arose a puzzle in the mind of Philo, as it in reality had, we\nmay see, in the minds of Socrates and Plato.  How could he reconcile the\nidea of that absolute and eternal one Being, that Zeus, Father of Gods\nand men, self-perfect, self-contained, without change or motion, in whom,\nas a Jew, he believed even more firmly than the Platonists, with the\nD\u00e6mon of Socrates, the Divine Teacher whom both Plato and Solomon\nconfessed?  Or how, again, could he reconcile the idea of Him with the\ncreative and providential energy, working in space and time, working on\nmatter, and apparently affected and limited, if not baffled, by the\nimperfection of the minds which he taught, by the imperfection of the\nmatter which he moulded?  This, as all students of philosophy must know,\nwas one of the great puzzles of old Greek philosophy, as long as it was\nearnest and cared to have any puzzles at all: it has been, since the days\nof Spinoza, the great puzzle of all earnest modern philosophers.  Philo\noffered a solution in that idea of a Logos, or Word of God, Divinity\narticulate, speaking and acting in time and space, and therefore by\nsuccessive acts; and so doing, in time and space, the will of the\ntimeless and spaceless Father, the Abysmal and Eternal Being, of whom he\nwas the perfect likeness.  In calling this person the Logos, and making\nhim the source of all human reason, and knowledge of eternal laws, he\nonly translated from Hebrew into Greek the name which he found in his\nsacred books, \u201cThe Word of God.\u201d  As yet we have found no unfair\nallegorising of Moses, or twisting of Plato.  How then has he incurred\nthis accusation?\n\nI cannot think, again, that he was unfair in supposing that he might hold\nat the same time the Jewish belief concerning Creation, and the Platonic\ndoctrine of the real existence of Archetypal ideas, both of moral and of\nphysical phenomena.  I do not mean that such a conception was present\nconsciously to the mind of the old Jews, as it was most certainly to the\nmind of St. Paul, a practised Platonic dialectician; but it seems to me,\nas to Philo, to be a fair, perhaps a necessary, corollary from the\nGenetic Philosophy, both of Moses and of Solomon.\n\nBut in one thing he was unfair; namely, in his allegorising.  But unfair\nto whom?  To Socrates and Plato, I believe, as much as to Moses and to\nSamuel.  For what is the part of the old Jewish books which he evaporates\naway into mere mystic symbols of the private experiences of the devout\nphilosopher?  Its practical everyday histories, which deal with the\ncommon human facts of family and national life, of man\u2019s outward and\nphysical labour and craft.  These to him have no meaning, except an\nallegoric one.  But has he thrown them away for the sake of getting a\nstep nearer to Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle?  Surely not.  To them,\nas to the old Jewish sages, man is most important when regarded not\nmerely as a soul, but as a man, a social being of flesh and blood.\nAristotle declares politics to be the architectonical science, the family\nand social relations to be the eternal master-facts of humanity.  Plato,\nin his Republic, sets before himself the Constitution of a State, as the\ncrowning problem of his philosophy.  Every work of his, like every saying\nof his master Socrates, deals with the common, outward, vulgar facts of\nhuman life, and asserts that there is a divine meaning in them, and that\nreverent induction from them is the way to obtain the deepest truths.\nSocrates and Plato were as little inclined to separate the man and the\nphilosopher as Moses, Solomon, or Isaiah were.  When Philo, by\nallegorising away the simple human parts of his books, is untrue to\nMoses\u2019s teaching, he becomes untrue to Plato\u2019s.  He becomes untrue, I\nbelieve, to a higher teaching than Plato\u2019s.  He loses sight of an eternal\ntruth, which even old Homer might have taught him, when he treats Moses\nas one section of his disciples in after years treated Homer.\n\nFor what is the secret of the eternal freshness, the eternal beauty, ay,\nI may say boldly, in spite of all their absurdities and immoralities, the\neternal righteousness of those old Greek myths?  What is it which made\nSocrates and Plato cling lovingly and reverently to them, they scarce\nknew why, while they deplored the immoralities to which they had given\nrise?  What is it which made those myths, alone of all old mythologies,\nthe parents of truly beautiful sculpture, painting, poetry? What is it\nwhich makes us love them still; find, even at times against our\nconsciences, new meaning, new beauty in them; and brings home the story\nof Perseas or of Hercules, alike to the practised reason of Niebuhr, and\nthe untutored instincts of Niebuhr\u2019s little child, for whom he threw them\ninto simplest forms?  Why is it that in spite of our disagreeing with\ntheir creed and their morality, we still persist\u2014and long may we persist,\nor rather be compelled\u2014as it were by blind instinct, to train our boys\nupon those old Greek dreams; and confess, whenever we try to find a\nsubstitute for them in our educational schemes, that we have as yet none?\nBecause those old Greek stories do represent the Deities as the\narchetypes, the kinsmen, the teachers, the friends, the inspirers of men.\nBecause while the schoolboy reads how the Gods were like to men, only\nbetter, wiser, greater; how the Heroes are the children of the Gods, and\nthe slayers of the monsters which devour the earth; how Athene taught men\nweaving, and Ph\u0153bus music, and Vulcan the cunning of the stithy; how the\nGods took pity on the noble-hearted son of Danae, and lent him celestial\narms and guided him over desert and ocean to fulfil his vow\u2014that boy is\nlearning deep lessons of metaphysic, more in accordance with the _reine\nvernunft_, the pure reason whereby man perceives that which is moral, and\nspiritual, and eternal, than he would from all disquisitions about being\nand becoming, about actualities and potentialities, which ever tormented\nthe weary brain of man.\n\nLet us not despise the gem because it has been broken to fragments,\nobscured by silt and mud.  Still less let us fancy that one least\nfragment of it is not more precious than the most brilliant paste jewel\nof our own compounding, though it be polished and faceted never so\ncompletely.  For what are all these myths but fragments of that great\nmetaphysic idea, which, I boldly say, I believe to be at once the\njustifier and the harmoniser of all philosophic truth which man has ever\ndiscovered, or will discover; which Philo saw partially, and yet clearly;\nwhich the Hebrew sages perceived far more deeply, because more humanly\nand practically; which Saint Paul the Platonist, and yet the Apostle,\nraised to its highest power, when he declared that the immutable and\nself-existent Being, for whom the Greek sages sought, and did not\naltogether seek in vain, has gathered together all things both in heaven\nand in earth in one inspiring and creating Logos, who is both God and\nMan?\n\nBe this as it may, we find that from the time of Philo, the deepest\nthought of the heathen world began to flow in a theologic channel.  All\nthe great heathen thinkers henceforth are theologians.  In the times of\nNero, for instance, Epictetus the slave, the regenerator of Stoicism, is\nno mere speculator concerning entities and quiddities, correct or\nincorrect.  He is a slave searching for the secret of freedom, and\nfinding that it consists in escaping not from a master, but from self:\nnot to wealth and power, but to Jove.  He discovers that Jove is, in some\nmost mysterious, but most real sense, the Father of men; he learns to\nlook up to that Father as his guide and friend.\n\nNumenius, again, in the second century, was a man who had evidently\nstudied Philo.  He perceived so deeply, I may say so exaggeratedly, the\nanalogy between the Jewish and the Platonic assertions of an Absolute and\nEternal Being, side by side with the assertion of a Divine Teacher of\nman, that he is said to have uttered the startling saying: \u201cWhat is Plato\nbut Moses talking Attic?\u201d  Doubtless Plato is not that: but the\nexpression is remarkable, as showing the tendency of the age.  He too\nlooks up to God with prayers for the guidance of his reason.  He too\nenters into speculation concerning God in His absoluteness, and in His\nconnection with the universe.  \u201cThe Primary God,\u201d he says, \u201cmust be free\nfrom works and a King; but the Demiurgus must exercise government, going\nthrough the heavens.  Through Him comes this our condition; through Him\nReason being sent down in efflux, holds communion with all who are\nprepared for it: God then looking down, and turning Himself to each of\nus, it comes to pass that our bodies live and are nourished, receiving\nstrength from the outer rays which come from Him.  But when God turns us\nto the contemplation of Himself, it comes to pass that these things are\nworn out and consumed, but that the reason lives, being partaker of a\nblessed life.\u201d\n\nThis passage is exceedingly interesting, as containing both the marrow of\nold Hebrew metaphysic, and also certain notional elements, of which we\nfind no trace in the Scripture, and which may lead\u2014as we shall find they\nafterwards did lead\u2014to confusing the moral with the notional, and finally\nthe notional with the material; in plain words, to Pantheism.\n\nYou find this tendency, in short, in all the philosophers who flourished\nbetween the age of Augustus and the rise of Alexandrian Neoplatonism.\nGibbon, while he gives an approving pat on the back to his pet\n\u201cPhilosophic Emperor,\u201d Marcus Aurelius, blinks the fact that Marcus\u2019s\nphilosophy, like that of Plutarch, contains as an integral element, a\nbelief which to him would have been, I fear, simply ludicrous, from its\nstrange analogy with the belief of John, the Christian Apostle.  What is\nMarcus Aurelius\u2019s cardinal doctrine?  That there is a God within him, a\nWord, a Logos, which \u201chas hold of him,\u201d and who is his teacher and\nguardian; that over and above his body and his soul, he has a Reason\nwhich is capable of \u201chearing that Divine Word, and obeying the monitions\nof that God.\u201d  What is Plutarch\u2019s cardinal doctrine?  That the same Word,\nthe D\u00e6mon who spoke to the heart of Socrates, is speaking to him and to\nevery philosopher; \u201ccoming into contact,\u201d he says, \u201cwith him in some\nwonderful manner;\u201d addressing the reason of those who, like Socrates,\nkeep their reason pure, not under the dominion of passion, nor mixing\nitself greatly with the body, and therefore quick and sensitive in\nresponding to that which encountered it.\n\nYou see from these two extracts what questions were arising in the minds\nof men, and how they touched on ethical and theological questions.  I say\narising in their minds: I believe that I ought to say rather, stirred up\nin their minds by One greater than they.  At all events, there they\nappeared, utterly independent of any Christian teaching.  The belief in\nthis Logos or D\u00e6mon speaking to the Reason of man, was one which neither\nPlutarch nor Marcus, neither Numenius nor Ammonius, as far as we can see,\nlearnt from the Christians; it was the common ground which they held with\nthem; the common battlefield which they disputed with them.\n\nNeither have we any reason to suppose that they learnt it from the\nHindoos.  That much Hindoo thought mixed with Neoplatonist speculation we\ncannot doubt; but there is not a jot more evidence to prove that\nAlexandrians borrowed this conception from the Mahabharavata, than that\nGeorge Fox the Quaker, or the author of the \u201cDeutsche Theologie,\u201d did so.\nThey may have gone to Hindoo philosophy, or rather, to second and third\nhand traditions thereof, for corroborations of the belief; but be sure,\nit must have existed in their own hearts first, or they would never have\ngone thither.  Believe it; be sure of it.  No earnest thinker is a\nplagiarist pure and simple.  He will never borrow from others that which\nhe has not already, more or less, thought out for himself.  When once a\ngreat idea, instinctive, inductive (for the two expressions are nearer\nakin than most fancy), has dawned on his soul, he will welcome lovingly,\nawfully, any corroboration from foreign schools, and cry with joy:\n\u201cBehold, this is not altogether a dream: for others have found it also.\nSurely it must be real, universal, eternal.\u201d  No; be sure there is far\nmore originality (in the common sense of the word), and far less (in the\ntrue sense of the word), than we fancy; and that it is a paltry and\nshallow doctrine which represents each succeeding school as merely the\npuppets and dupes of the preceding.  More originality, because each\nearnest man seems to think out for himself the deepest grounds of his\ncreed.  Less originality, because, as I believe, one common Logos, Word,\nReason, reveals and unveils the same eternal truth to all who seek and\nhunger for it.\n\nTherefore we can, as the Christian philosophers of Alexandria did,\nrejoice over every truth which their heathen adversaries beheld, and\nattribute them, as Clement does, to the highest source, to the\ninspiration of the one and universal Logos.  With Clement, philosophy is\nonly hurtful when it is untrue to itself, and philosophy falsely so\ncalled; true philosophy is an image of the truth, a divine gift bestowed\non the Greeks.  The Bible, in his eyes, asserts that all forms of art and\nwisdom are from God.  The wise in mind have no doubt some peculiar\nendowment of nature, but when they have offered themselves for their\nwork, they receive a spirit of perception from the Highest Wisdom, giving\nthem a new fitness for it.  All severe study, all cultivation of\nsympathy, are exercises of this spiritual endowment.  The whole\nintellectual discipline of the Greeks, with their philosophy, came down\nfrom God to men.  Philosophy, he concludes in one place, carries on \u201can\ninquiry concerning Truth and the nature of Being; and this Truth is that\nconcerning which the Lord Himself said: \u2018I am the Truth.\u2019  And when the\ninitiated find, or rather receive, the true philosophy, they have it from\nthe Truth itself; that is from Him who is true.\u201d\n\nWhile, then, these two schools had so many grounds in common, where was\ntheir point of divergence?  We shall find it, I believe, fairly expressed\nin the dying words of Plotinus, the great father of Neoplatonism.  \u201cI am\nstriving to bring the God which is in us into harmony with the God which\nis in the universe.\u201d  Whether or not Plotinus actually so spoke, that was\nwhat his disciples not only said that he spoke, but what they would have\nwished him to speak.  That one sentence expresses the whole object of\ntheir philosophy.\n\nBut to that Pant\u00e6nus, Origen, Clement, and Augustine would have answered:\n\u201cAnd we, on the other hand, assert that the God which is in the universe,\nis the same as the God which is in you, and is striving to bring you into\nharmony with Himself.\u201d  There is the _experimentum crucis_.  There is the\nvast gulf between the Christian and the Heathen schools, which when any\nman had overleaped, the whole problem of the universe was from that\nmoment inverted.  With Plotinus and his school man is seeking for God:\nwith Clement and his, God is seeking for man.  With the former, God is\npassive, and man active: with the latter, God is active, man is\npassive\u2014passive, that is, in so far as his business is to listen when he\nis spoken to, to look at the light which is unveiled to him, to submit\nhimself to the inward laws which he feels reproving and checking him at\nevery turn, as Socrates was reproved and checked by his inward D\u00e6mon.\n\nWhether of these two theorems gives the higher conception either of the\nDivine Being, or of man, I leave it for you to judge.  To those old\nAlexandrian Christians, a being who was not seeking after every single\ncreature, and trying to raise him, could not be a Being of absolute\nRighteousness, Power, Love; could not be a Being worthy of respect or\nadmiration, even of philosophic speculation.  Human righteousness and\nlove flows forth disinterestedly to all around it, however unconscious,\nhowever unworthy they may be; human power associated with goodness, seeks\nfor objects which it may raise and benefit by that power.  We must\nconfess this, with the Christian schools, or, with the Heathen schools,\nwe must allow another theory, which brought them into awful depths; which\nmay bring any generation which holds it into the same depths.\n\nIf Clement had asked the Neoplatonists: \u201cYou believe, Plotinus, in an\nabsolutely Good Being.  Do you believe that it desires to shed forth its\ngoodness on all?\u201d  \u201cOf course,\u201d they would have answered, \u201con those who\nseek for it, on the philosopher.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut not, it seems, Plotinus, on the herd, the brutal, ignorant mass,\nwallowing in those foul crimes above which you have risen?\u201d  And at that\nquestion there would have been not a little hesitation.  These brutes in\nhuman form, these souls wallowing in earthly mire, could hardly, in the\nNeoplatonists\u2019 eyes, be objects of the Divine desire.\n\n\u201cThen this Absolute Good, you say, Plotinus, has no relation with them,\nno care to raise them.  In fact, it cannot raise them, because they have\nnothing in common with it.  Is that your notion?\u201d  And the Neoplatonists\nwould have, on the whole, allowed that argument.  And if Clement had\nanswered, that such was not his notion of Goodness, or of a Good Being,\nand that therefore the goodness of their Absolute Good, careless of the\ndegradation and misery around it, must be something very different from\nhis notions of human goodness; the Neoplatonists would have\nanswered\u2014indeed they did answer\u2014\u201cAfter all, why not?  Why should the\nAbsolute Goodness be like our human goodness?\u201d  This is Plotinus\u2019s own\nbelief.  It is a question with him, it was still more a question with\nthose who came after him, whether virtues could be predicated of the\nDivine nature; courage, for instance, of one who had nothing to fear;\nself-restraint, of one who had nothing to desire.  And thus, by setting\nup a different standard of morality for the divine and for the human,\nPlotinus gradually arrives at the conclusion, that virtue is not the end,\nbut the means; not the Divine nature itself, as the Christian schools\nheld, but only the purgative process by which man was to ascend into\nheaven, and which was necessary to arrive at that nature\u2014that nature\nitself being\u2014what?\n\nAnd how to answer that last question was the abysmal problem of the whole\nof Neoplatonic philosophy, in searching for which it wearied itself out,\ngeneration after generation, till tired equally of seeking and of\nspeaking, it fairly lay down and died.  In proportion as it refused to\nacknowledge a common divine nature with the degraded mass, it deserted\nits first healthy instinct, which told it that the spiritual world is\nidentical with the moral world, with right, love, justice; it tried to\nfind new definitions for the spiritual; it conceived it to be identical\nwith the intellectual.  That did not satisfy its heart.  It had to\nrepeople the spiritual world, which it had emptied of its proper\ndenizens, with ghosts; to reinvent the old d\u00e6monologies and\npolytheisms\u2014from thence to descend into lower depths, of which we will\nspeak hereafter.\n\nBut in the meanwhile we must look at another quarrel which arose between\nthe two twin schools of Alexandria.  The Neoplatonists said that there is\na divine element in man.  The Christian philosophers assented fervently,\nand raised the old disagreeable question: \u201cIs it in every man?  In the\npublicans and harlots as well as in the philosophers?  We say that it\nis.\u201d  And there again the Neoplatonist finds it over hard to assent to a\ndoctrine, equally contrary to outward appearance, and galling to\nPharisaic pride; and enters into a hundred honest self-puzzles and\nself-contradictions, which seem to justify him at last in saying, No.  It\nis in the philosopher, who is ready by nature, as Plotinus has it, and as\nit were furnished with wings, and not needing to sever himself from\nmatter like the rest, but disposed already to ascend to that which is\nabove.  And in a degree too, it is in the \u201clover,\u201d who, according to\nPlotinus, has a certain innate recollection of beauty, and hovers round\nit, and desires it, wherever he sees it.  Him you may raise to the\napprehension of the one incorporeal Beauty, by teaching him to separate\nbeauty from the various objects in which it appears scattered and\ndivided.  And it is even in the third class, the lowest of whom there is\nhope, namely, the musical man, capable of being passively affected by\nbeauty, without having any active appetite for it; the sentimentalist, in\nshort, as we should call him nowadays.\n\nBut for the herd, Plotinus cannot say that there is anything divine in\nthem.  And thus it gradually comes out in all Neoplatonist writings which\nI have yet examined, that the Divine only exists in a man, in proportion\nas he is conscious of its existence in him.  From which spring two\nconceptions of the Divine in man.  First, is it a part of him, if it is\ndependent for its existence on his consciousness of it? Or is it, as\nPhilo, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius would have held, as the Christians held,\nsomething independent of him, without him, a Logos or Word speaking to\nhis reason and conscience?  With this question Plotinus grapples,\nearnestly, shrewdly, fairly.  If you wish to see how he does it, you\nshould read the fourth and fifth books of the sixth Ennead, especially if\nyou be lucky enough to light on a copy of that rare book, Taylor\u2019s\nfaithful though crabbed translation.\n\nNot that the result of his search is altogether satisfactory.  He enters\ninto subtle and severe disquisitions concerning soul.  Whether it is one\nor many.  How it can be both one and many.  He has the strongest\nperception that, to use the noble saying of the Germans, \u201cTime and Space\nare no gods.\u201d  He sees clearly that the soul, and the whole unseen world\nof truly existing being, is independent of time and space: and yet, after\nhe has wrestled with the two Titans, through page after page, and\napparently conquered them, they slip in again unawares into the\nbattle-field, the moment his back is turned.  He denies that the one\nReason has parts\u2014it must exist as a whole wheresoever it exists: and yet\nhe cannot express the relation of the individual soul to it, but by\nsaying that we are parts of it; or that each thing, down to the lowest,\nreceives as much soul as it is capable of possessing.  Ritter has worked\nout at length, though in a somewhat dry and lifeless way, the hundred\ncontradictions of this kind which you meet in Plotinus; contradictions\nwhich I suspect to be inseparable from any philosophy starting from his\ngrounds.  Is he not looking for the spiritual in a region where it does\nnot exist; in the region of logical conceptions and abstractions, which\nare not realities, but only, after all, symbols of our own, whereby we\nexpress to ourselves the processes of our own brain?  May not his\nChristian contemporaries have been nearer scientific truth, as well as\nnearer the common sense and practical belief of mankind, in holding that\nthat which is spiritual is personal, and can only be seen or conceived of\nas residing in persons; and that that which is personal is moral, and has\nto do, not with abstractions of the intellect, but with right and wrong,\nlove and hate, and all which, in the common instincts of men, involves a\nfree will, a free judgment, a free responsibility and desert? And that,\ntherefore, if there were a Spirit, a D\u00e6monic Element, an universal\nReason, a Logos, a Divine Element, closely connected with man, that one\nReason, that one Divine Element, must be a person also?  At least, so\nstrong was the instinct of even the Heathen schools in this direction,\nthat the followers of Plotinus had to fill up the void which yawned\nbetween man and the invisible things after which he yearned, by reviving\nthe whole old Pagan Polytheism, and adding to it a D\u00e6monology borrowed\npartly from the Chaldees, and partly from the Jewish rabbis, which formed\na descending chain of persons, downward from the highest Deities to\nheroes, and to the guardian angel of each man; the meed of the\nphilosopher being, that by self-culture and self-restraint he could rise\nabove the tutelage of some lower and more earthly d\u00e6mon, and become the\npupil of a God, and finally a God himself.\n\nThese contradictions need not lower the great Father of Neoplatonism in\nour eyes, as a moral being.  All accounts of him seem to prove him to\nhave been what Apollo, in a lengthy oracle, declared him to have been,\n\u201cgood and gentle, and benignant exceedingly, and pleasant in all his\nconversation.\u201d  He gave good advice about earthly matters, was a faithful\nsteward of moneys deposited with him, a guardian of widows and orphans, a\nrighteous and loving man.  In his practical life, the ascetic and gnostic\nelement comes out strongly enough.  The body, with him, was not evil,\nneither was it good; it was simply nothing\u2014why care about it? He would\nhave no portrait taken of his person: \u201cIt was humiliating enough to be\nobliged to carry a shadow about with him, without having a shadow made of\nthat shadow.\u201d  He refused animal food, abstained from baths, declined\nmedicine in his last illness, and so died about 200 A.D.\n\nIt is in his followers, as one generally sees in such cases, that the\nweakness of his conceptions comes out.  Plotinus was an earnest thinker,\nslavishly enough reverencing the opinion of Plato, whom he quotes as an\ninfallible oracle, with a \u201cHe says,\u201d as if there were but one he in the\nuniverse: but he tried honestly to develop Plato, or what he conceived to\nbe Plato, on the method which Plato had laid down.  His dialectic is far\nsuperior, both in quantity and in quality, to that of those who come\nafter him.  He is a seeker.  His followers are not.  The great work which\nmarks the second stage of his school is not an inquiry, but a\njustification, not only of the Egyptian, but of all possible theurgies\nand superstitions; perhaps the best attempt of the kind which the world\nhas ever seen; that which marks the third is a mere cloud-castle, an\ninverted pyramid, not of speculation, but of dogmatic assertion, patched\ntogether from all accessible rags and bones of the dead world.  Some here\nwill, perhaps, guess from my rough descriptions, that I speak of\nIamblichus and Proclus.\n\nWhether or not Iamblichus wrote the famous work usually attributed to\nhim, which describes itself as the letter of Abamnon the Teacher to\nPorphyry, he became the head of that school of Neoplatonists who fell\nback on theurgy and magic, and utterly swallowed up the more rational,\nthough more hopeless, school of Porphyry.  Not that Porphyry, too, with\nall his dislike of magic and the vulgar superstitions\u2014a dislike\nintimately connected with his loudly expressed dislike of the common\nherd, and therefore of Christianity, as a religion for the common\nherd\u2014did not believe a fact or two, which looks to us, nowadays, somewhat\nunphilosophical.  From him we learn that one Ammonius, trying to crush\nPlotinus by magic arts, had his weapons so completely turned against\nhimself, that all his limbs were contracted.  From him we learn that\nPlotinus, having summoned in the temple of Isis his familiar spirit, a\ngod, and not a mere d\u00e6mon, appeared.  He writes sensibly enough however\nto one Anebos, an Egyptian priest, stating his doubts as to the popular\nnotions of the Gods, as beings subject to human passions and vices, and\nof theurgy and magic, as material means of compelling them to appear, or\nalluring them to favour man.  The answer of Abamnon, Anebos, Iamblichus,\nor whoever the real author may have been, is worthy of perusal by every\nmetaphysical student, as a curious phase of thought, not confined to that\ntime, but rife, under some shape or other, in every age of the world\u2019s\nhistory, and in this as much as in any.  There are many passages full of\neloquence, many more full of true and noble thought: but on the whole, it\nis the sewing of new cloth into an old garment; the attempt to suit the\nold superstition to the new one, by eclectically picking and choosing,\nand special pleading, on both sides; but the rent is only made worse.\nThere is no base superstition which Abamnon does not unconsciously\njustify.  And yet he is rapidly losing sight of the real eternal human\ngerms of truth round which those superstitions clustered, and is really\nfurther from truth and reason than old Homer or Hesiod, because further\nfrom the simple, universal, everyday facts, and relations, and duties of\nman, which are, after all, among the most mysterious, and also among the\nmost sacred objects which man can contemplate.\n\nIt was not wonderful, however, that Neoplatonism took the course it did.\nSpirit, they felt rightly, was meant to rule matter; it was to be freed\nfrom matter only for that very purpose.  No one could well deny that.\nThe philosopher, as he rose and became, according to Plotinus, a god, or\nat least approached toward the gods, must partake of some mysterious and\ntranscendental power.  No one could well deny that conclusion, granting\nthe premiss.  But of what power?  What had he to show as the result of\nhis intimate communion with an unseen Being?  The Christian Schools, who\nheld that the spiritual is the moral, answered accordingly.  He must show\nrighteousness, and love, and peace in a Holy Spirit.  That is the\nlikeness of God.  In proportion as a man has them, he is partaker of a\nDivine nature.  He can rise no higher, and he needs no more.  Platonists\nhad said\u2014No, that is only virtue; and virtue is the means, not the end.\nWe want proof of having something above that; something more than any man\nof the herd, any Christian slave, can perform; something above nature;\nportents and wonders.  So they set to work to perform wonders; and\nsucceeded, I suppose, more or less.  For now one enters into a whole\nfairyland of those very phenomena which are puzzling us so\nnowadays\u2014ecstasy, clairvoyance, insensibility to pain, cures produced by\nthe effect of what we now call mesmerism.  They are all there, these\nmodern puzzles, in those old books of the long bygone seekers for wisdom.\nIt makes us love them, while it saddens us to see that their difficulties\nwere the same as ours, and that there is nothing new under the sun.  Of\ncourse, a great deal of it all was \u201cimagination.\u201d  But the question then,\nas now is, what is this wonder-working imagination?\u2014unless the word be\nused as a mere euphemism for lying, which really, in many cases, is\nhardly fair.  We cannot wonder at the old Neoplatonists for attributing\nthese strange phenomena to spiritual influence, when we see some who\nought to know better doing the same thing now; and others, who more\nwisely believe them to be strictly physical and nervous, so utterly\nunable to give reasons for them, that they feel it expedient to ignore\nthem for awhile, till they know more about those physical phenomena which\ncan be put under some sort of classification, and attributed to some sort\nof inductive law.\n\nBut again.  These ecstasies, cures, and so forth, brought them rapidly\nback to the old priestcrafts.  The Egyptian priests, the Babylonian and\nJewish sorcerers, had practised all this as a trade for ages, and reduced\nit to an art.  It was by sleeping in the temples of the deities, after\ndue mesmeric manipulations, that cures were even then effected.  Surely\nthe old priests were the people to whom to go for information.  The old\nphilosophers of Greece were venerable.  How much more those of the East,\nin comparison with whom the Greeks were children?  Besides, if these\nd\u00e6mons and deities were so near them, might it not be possible to behold\nthem?  They seemed to have given up caring much for the world and its\ncourse\u2014\n\n             Effugerant adytis templisque relictis\n    D\u00ee quibus imperium steterat.\n\nThe old priests used to make them appear\u2014perhaps they might do it again.\nAnd if spirit could act directly and preternaturally on matter, in spite\nof the laws of matter, perhaps matter might act on spirit.  After all,\nwere matter and spirit so absolutely different?  Was not spirit some sort\nof pervading essence, some subtle ethereal fluid, differing from matter\nprincipally in being less gross and dense?  This was the point to which\nthey went down rapidly enough; the point to which all philosophies, I\nfirmly believe, will descend, which do not keep in sight that the\nspiritual means the moral.  In trying to make it mean exclusively the\nintellectual, they will degrade it to mean the merely logical and\nabstract; and when that is found to be a barren and lifeless phantom, a\nmere projection of the human brain, attributing reality to mere\nconceptions and names, and confusing the subject with the object, as\nlogicians say truly the Neoplatonists did, then in despair, the school\nwill try to make the spiritual something real, or, at least, something\nconceivable, by reinvesting it with the properties of matter, and talking\nof it as if it were some manner of gas, or heat, or electricity, or\nforce, pervading time and space, conditioned by the accidents of brute\nmatter, and a part of that nature which is born to die.\n\nThe culmination of all this confusion we see in Proclus.  The unfortunate\nHypatia, who is the most important personage between him and Iamblichus,\nhas left no writings to our times; we can only judge of her doctrine by\nthat of her instructors and her pupils.  Proclus was taught by the men\nwho had heard her lecture; and the golden chain of the Platonic\nsuccession descended from her to him.  His throne, however, was at\nAthens, not at Alexandria.  After the murder of the maiden philosopher,\nNeoplatonism prudently retired to Greece.  But Proclus is so essentially\nthe child of the Alexandrian school that we cannot pass him over.\nIndeed, according to M. Cousin, as I am credibly informed, he is _the_\nGreek philosopher; the flower and crown of all its schools; in whom, says\nthe learned Frenchman, \u201care combined, and from whom shine forth, in no\nirregular or uncertain rays, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno,\nPlotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus;\u201d and who \u201chad so comprehended all\nreligions in his mind, and paid them such equal reverence, that he was,\nas it were, the priest of the whole universe!\u201d\n\nI have not the honour of knowing much of M. Cousin\u2019s works.  I never came\nacross them but on one small matter of fact, and on that I found him\ncopying at second hand an anachronism which one would have conceived\npalpable to any reader of the original authorities.  This is all I know\nof him, saving these his raptures over Proclus, of which I have quoted\nonly a small portion, and of which I can only say, in Mr. Thomas\nCarlyle\u2019s words, \u201cWhat things men will worship, in their extreme need!\u201d\nOther moderns, however, have expressed their admiration of Proclus; and,\nno doubt, many neat sayings may be found in him (for after all he was a\nGreek), which will be both pleasing and useful to those who consider\nphilosophic method to consist in putting forth strings of brilliant\napophthegms, careless about either their consistency or coherence: but of\nthe method of Plato or Aristotle, any more than of that of Kant or Mill,\nyou will find nothing in him.  He seems to my simplicity to be at once\nthe most timid and servile of commentators, and the most cloudy of\ndeclaimers.  He can rave symbolism like Jacob B\u00f6hmen, but without an atom\nof his originality and earnestness.  He can develop an inverted pyramid\nof d\u00e6monology, like Father Newman himself, but without an atom of his\nart, his knowledge of human cravings.  He combines all schools, truly,\nChaldee and Egyptian as well as Greek; but only scraps from their\nmummies, drops from their quintessences, which satisfy the heart and\nconscience as little as they do the logical faculties.  His Greek gods\nand heroes, even his Alcibiades and Socrates, are \u201cideas;\u201d that is,\nsymbols of certain notions or qualities: their flesh and bones, their\nheart and brain, have been distilled away, till nothing is left but a\nword, a notion, which may patch a hole in his huge\nheaven-and-earth-embracing system.  He, too, is a commentator and a\ndeducer; all has been discovered; and he tries to discover nothing more.\nThose who followed him seem to have commented on his comments.  With him\nNeoplatonism properly ends.  Is its last utterance a culmination or a\nfall?  Have the Titans sealed heaven, or died of old age, \u201cexhibiting,\u201d\nas Gibbon says of them, \u201ca deplorable instance of the senility of the\nhuman mind?\u201d Read Proclus, and judge for yourselves: but first contrive\nto finish everything else you have to do which can possibly be useful to\nany human being.  Life is short, and Art\u2014at least the art of obtaining\npractical guidance from the last of the Alexandrians\u2014very long.\n\nAnd yet\u2014if Proclus and his school became gradually unfaithful to the\ngreat root-idea of their philosophy, we must not imitate them.  We must\nnot believe that the last of the Alexandrians was under no divine\nteaching, because he had be-systemed himself into confused notions of\nwhat that teaching was like.  Yes, there was good in poor old Proclus;\nand it too came from the only source whence all good comes.  Were there\nno good in him I could not laugh at him as I have done; I could only hate\nhim.  There are moments when he rises above his theories; moments when he\nrecurs in spirit, if not in the letter, to the faith of Homer, almost to\nthe faith of Philo.  Whether these are the passages of his which his\nmodern admirers prize most, I cannot tell.  I should fancy not:\nnevertheless I will read you one of them.\n\nHe is about to commence his discourses on the Parmenides, that book in\nwhich we generally now consider that Plato has been most untrue to\nhimself, and fallen from his usual inductive method to the ground of a\nmere _\u00e0 priori_ theoriser\u2014and yet of which Proclus is reported to have\nsaid, and, I should conceive, said honestly, that if it, the Tim\u00e6us, and\nthe Orphic fragments were preserved, he did not care whether every other\nbook on earth were destroyed.  But how does he commence?\n\n\u201cI pray to all the gods and goddesses to guide my reason in the\nspeculation which lies before me, and having kindled in me the pure light\nof truth, to direct my mind upward to the very knowledge of the things\nwhich are, and to open the doors of my soul to receive the divine\nguidance of Plato, and, having directed my knowledge into the very\nbrightness of being, to withdraw me from the various forms of opinion,\nfrom the apparent wisdom, from the wandering about things which do not\nexist, by that purest intellectual exercise about the things which do\nexist, whereby alone the eye of the soul is nourished and brightened, as\nSocrates says in the Ph\u00e6drus; and that the Noetic Gods will give to me\nthe perfect reason, and the Noeric Gods the power which leads up to this,\nand that the rulers of the Universe above the heaven will impart to me an\nenergy unshaken by material notions and emancipated from them, and those\nto whom the world is given as their dominion a winged life, and the\nangelic choirs a true manifestation of divine things, and the good d\u00e6mons\nthe fulness of the inspiration which comes from the Gods, and the heroes\na grand, and venerable, and lofty fixedness of mind, and the whole divine\nrace together a perfect preparation for sharing in Plato\u2019s most mystical\nand far-seeing speculations, which he declares to us himself in the\nParmenides, with the profundity befitting such topics, but which _he_\n(_i.e._ his master Syrianus) completed by his most pure and luminous\napprehensions, who did most truly share the Platonic feast, and was the\nmedium for transmitting the divine truth, the guide in our speculations,\nand the hierophant of these divine words; who, as I think, came down as a\ntype of philosophy, to do good to the souls that are here, in place of\nidols, sacrifices, and the whole mystery of purification, a leader of\nsalvation to the men who are now and who shall be hereafter.  And may the\nwhole band of those who are above us be propitious; and may the whole\nforce which they supply be at hand, kindling before us that light which,\nproceeding from them, may guide us to them.\u201d\n\nSurely this is an interesting document.  The last Pagan Greek prayer, I\nbelieve, which we have on record; the death-wail of the old world\u2014not\nwithout a touch of melody.  One cannot altogether admire the style; it is\ninflated, pedantic, written, I fear, with a considerable consciousness\nthat he was saying the right thing and in the very finest way: but still\nit is a prayer.  A cry for light\u2014by no means, certainly, like that noble\none in Tennyson\u2019s \u201cIn Memoriam:\u201d\n\n    So runs my dream.  But what am I?\n       An infant crying in the night;\n       An infant crying for the light;\n    And with no language but a cry.\n\nYet he asks for light: perhaps he had settled already for himself\u2014like\ntoo many more of us\u2014what sort of light he chose to have: but still the\neye is turned upward to the sun, not inward in conceited fancy that self\nis its own illumination.  He asks\u2014surely not in vain.  There was light to\nbe had for asking.  That prayer certainly was not answered in the letter:\nit may have been ere now in the spirit.  And yet it is a sad prayer\nenough.  Poor old man, and poor old philosophy!\n\nThis he and his teachers had gained by despising the simpler and yet far\nprofounder doctrine of the Christian schools, that the Logos, the Divine\nTeacher in whom both Christians and Heathens believed, was the very\narchetype of men, and that He had proved that fact by being made flesh,\nand dwelling bodily among them, that they might behold His glory, full of\ngrace and truth, and see that it was at once the perfection of man and\nthe perfection of God: that that which was most divine was most human,\nand that which was most human, most divine.  That was the outcome of\n_their_ metaphysic, that they had found the Absolute One; because One\nexisted in whom the apparent antagonism between that which is eternally\nand that which becomes in time, between the ideal and the actual, between\nthe spiritual and the material, in a word, between God and man, was\nexplained and reconciled for ever.\n\nAnd Proclus\u2019s prayer, on the other hand, was the outcome of the\nNeoplatonists\u2019 metaphysic, the end of all _their_ search after the One,\nthe Indivisible, the Absolute, this cry to all manner of innumerable\nphantoms, ghosts of ideas, ghosts of traditions, neither things nor\npersons, but thoughts, to give the philosopher each something or other,\naccording to the nature of each.  Not that he very clearly defines what\neach is to give him; but still he feels himself in want of all manner of\nthings, and it is as well to have as many friends at court as\npossible\u2014Noetic Gods, Noeric Gods, rulers, angels, d\u00e6mons, heroes\u2014to\nenable him to do what?  To understand Plato\u2019s most mystical and\nfar-seeing speculations.  The Eternal Nous, the Intellectual Teacher has\nvanished further and further off; further off still some dim vision of a\nsupreme Goodness.  Infinite spaces above that looms through the mist of\nthe abyss a Prim\u00e6val One.  But even that has a predicate, for it is one;\nit is not pure essence.  Must there not be something beyond that again,\nwhich is not even one, but is nameless, inconceivable, absolute?  What an\nabyss!  How shall the human mind find anything whereon to rest, in the\nvast nowhere between it and the object of its search?  The search after\nthe One issues in a wail to the innumerable; and kind gods, angels, and\nheroes, not human indeed, but still conceivable enough to satisfy at\nleast the imagination, step in to fill the void, as they have done since,\nand may do again; and so, as Mr. Carlyle has it, \u201cthe bottomless pit got\nroofed over,\u201d as it may be again ere long.\n\nAre we then to say, that Neoplatonism was a failure?  That Alexandria,\nduring four centuries of profound and earnest thought, added nothing?\nHeaven forbid that we should say so of a philosophy which has exercised\non European thought, at the crisis of its noblest life and action, an\ninfluence as great as did the Aristotelian system during the Middle Ages.\nWe must never forget, that during the two centuries which commence with\nthe fall of Constantinople, and end with our civil wars, not merely\nalmost all great thinkers, but courtiers, statesmen, warriors, poets,\nwere more or less Neoplatonists.  The Greek grammarians, who migrated\ninto Italy, brought with them the works of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and\nProclus; and their gorgeous reveries were welcomed eagerly by the\nEuropean mind, just revelling in the free thought of youthful manhood.\nAnd yet the Alexandrian impotence for any practical and social purposes\nwas to be manifested, as utterly as it was in Alexandria or in Athens of\nold.  Ficinus and Picus of Mirandola worked no deliverance, either for\nItalian morals or polity, at a time when such deliverance was needed\nbitterly enough.  Neoplatonism was petted by luxurious and heathen popes,\nas an elegant play of the cultivated fancy, which could do their real\npower, their practical system, neither good nor harm.  And one cannot\nhelp feeling, while reading the magnificent oration on Supra-sensual\nLove, which Castiglione, in his admirable book \u201cThe Courtier,\u201d puts into\nthe mouth of the profligate Bembo, how near mysticism may lie not merely\nto dilettantism or to Pharisaism, but to sensuality itself.  But in\nEngland, during Elizabeth\u2019s reign, the practical weakness of Neoplatonism\nwas compensated by the noble practical life which men were compelled to\nlive in those great times; by the strong hold which they had of the ideas\nof family and national life, of law and personal faith.  And I cannot but\nbelieve it to have been a mighty gain to such men as Sidney, Raleigh, and\nSpenser, that they had drunk, however slightly, of the wells of Proclus\nand Plotinus.  One cannot read Spenser\u2019s \u201cFairy Queen,\u201d above all his\nGarden of Adonis, and his cantos on Mutability, without feeling that his\nNeoplatonism must have kept him safe from many a dark eschatological\nsuperstition, many a narrow and bitter dogmatism, which was even then\ntormenting the English mind, and must have helped to give him altogether\na freer and more loving conception, if not a consistent or accurate one,\nof the wondrous harmony of that mysterious analogy between the physical\nand the spiritual, which alone makes poetry (and I had almost said\nphilosophy also) possible, and have taught him to behold alike in suns\nand planets, in flowers and insects, in man and in beings higher than\nman, one glorious order of love and wisdom, linking them all to Him from\nwhom they all proceed, rays from His cloudless sunlight, mirrors of His\neternal glory.\n\nBut as the Elizabethan age, exhausted by its own fertility, gave place to\nthe Caroline, Neoplatonism ran through much the same changes.  It was\ngood for us, after all, that the plain strength of the Puritans,\nunphilosophical as they were, swept it away.  One feels in reading the\nlater Neoplatonists, Henry More, Smith, even Cudworth (valuable as he\nis), that the old accursed distinction between the philosopher, the\nscholar, the illuminate, and the plain righteous man, was growing up\nagain very fast.  The school from which the \u201cReligio Medici\u201d issued was\nnot likely to make any bad men good, or any foolish men wise.\n\nBesides, as long as men were continuing to quote poor old Proclus as an\nirrefragable authority, and believing that he, forsooth, represented the\nsense of Plato, the new-born Baconian philosophy had but little chance in\nthe world.  Bacon had been right in his dislike of Platonism years\nbefore, though he was unjust to Plato himself.  It was Proclus whom he\nwas really reviling; Proclus as Plato\u2019s commentator and representative.\nThe lion had for once got into the ass\u2019s skin, and was treated\naccordingly.  The true Platonic method, that dialectic which the\nAlexandrians gradually abandoned, remains yet to be tried, both in\nEngland and in Germany; and I am much mistaken, if, when fairly used, it\nbe not found the ally, not the enemy, of the Baconian philosophy; in\nfact, the inductive method applied to words, as the expressions of\nMetaphysic Laws, instead of to natural phenomena, as the expressions of\nPhysical ones.  If you wish to see the highest instances of this method,\nread Plato himself, not Proclus.  If you wish to see how the same method\ncan be applied to Christian truth, read the dialectic passages in\nAugustine\u2019s \u201cConfessions.\u201d  Whether or not you shall agree with their\nconclusions, you will not be likely, if you have a truly scientific habit\nof mind, to complain that they want either profundity, severity, or\nsimplicity.\n\nSo concludes the history of one of the Alexandrian schools of Metaphysic.\nWhat was the fate of the other is a subject which I must postpone to my\nnext Lecture.\n\n\n\n\nLECTURE IV.\nTHE CROSS AND THE CRESCENT.\n\n\nI TRIED to point out, in my last Lecture, the causes which led to the\ndecay of the Pagan metaphysic of Alexandria.  We have now to consider the\nfate of the Christian school.\n\nYou may have remarked that I have said little or nothing about the\npositive dogmas of Clement, Origen, and their disciples; but have only\nbrought out the especial points of departure between them and the\nHeathens.  My reason for so doing was twofold: first, I could not have\nexamined them without entering on controversial ground; next, I am very\ndesirous to excite some of my hearers, at least, to examine these\nquestions for themselves.\n\nI entreat them not to listen to the hasty sneer to which many of late\nhave given way, that the Alexandrian divines were mere mystics, who\ncorrupted Christianity by an admixture of Oriental and Greek thought.  My\nown belief is that they expanded and corroborated Christianity, in spite\nof great errors and defects on certain points, far more than they\ncorrupted it; that they presented it to the minds of cultivated and\nscientific men in the only form in which it would have satisfied their\nphilosophic aspirations, and yet contrived, with wonderful wisdom, to\nground their philosophy on the very same truths which they taught to the\nmeanest slaves, and to appeal in the philosophers to the same inward\nfaculty to which they appealed in the slave; namely, to that inward eye,\nthat moral sense and reason, whereby each and every man can, if he will,\n\u201cjudge of himself that which is right.\u201d  I boldly say that I believe the\nAlexandrian Christians to have made the best, perhaps the only, attempt\nyet made by men, to proclaim a true world-philosophy; whereby I mean a\nphilosophy common to all races, ranks, and intellects, embracing the\nwhole phenomena of humanity, and not an arbitrarily small portion of\nthem, and capable of being understood and appreciated by every human\nbeing from the highest to the lowest.  And when you hear of a system of\nreserve in teaching, a _disciplina arcani_, of an esoteric and exoteric,\nan inner and outer school, among these men, you must not be frightened at\nthe words, as if they spoke of priestcraft, or an intellectual\naristocracy, who kept the kernel of the nut for themselves, and gave the\nhusks to the mob.  It was not so with the Christian schools; it was so\nwith the Heathen ones.  The Heathens were content that the mob, the herd,\nshould have the husks.  Their avowed intention and wish was to leave the\nherd, as they called them, in the mere outward observance of the old\nidolatries, while they themselves, the cultivated philosophers, had the\nmonopoly of those deeper spiritual truths which were contained under the\nold superstitions, and were too sacred to be profaned by the vulgar eyes.\nThe Christian method was the exact opposite.  They boldly called those\nvulgar eyes to enter into the very holy of holies, and there gaze on the\nvery deepest root-ideas of their philosophy.  They owned no ground for\ntheir own speculations which was not common to the harlots and the slaves\naround.  And this was what enabled them to do this; this was what brought\non them the charge of demagogism, the hatred of philosophers, the\npersecution of princes\u2014that their ground was a moral ground, and not a\nmerely intellectual one; that they started, not from any notions of the\nunderstanding, but from the inward conscience, that truly pure Reason in\nwhich the intellectual and the moral spheres are united, which they\nbelieved to exist, however dimmed or crushed, in every human being,\ncapable of being awakened, purified, and raised up to a noble and heroic\nlife.  They concealed nothing moral from their disciples: only they\nforbade them to meddle with intellectual matters, before they had had a\nregular intellectual training.  The witnesses of reason and conscience\nwere sufficient guides for all men, and at them the many might well stop\nshort.  The teacher only needed to proceed further, not into a higher\nregion, but into a lower one, namely, into the region of the logical\nunderstanding, and there make deductions from, and illustrations of,\nthose higher truths which he held in common with every slave, and held on\nthe same ground as they.\n\nAnd the consequence of this method of philosophising was patent.  They\nwere enabled to produce, in the lives of millions, generation after\ngeneration, a more immense moral improvement than the world had ever seen\nbefore.  Their disciples did actually become righteous and good men, just\nin proportion as they were true to the lessons they learnt.  They did,\nfor centuries, work a distinct and palpable deliverance on the earth;\nwhile all the solemn and earnest meditation of the Neoplatonists, however\ngood or true, worked no deliverance whatsoever.  Plotinus longed at one\ntime to make a practical attempt.  He asked the Emperor Gallienus, his\npatron, to rebuild for him a city in Campania; to allow him to call it\nPlatonopolis, and put it into the hands of him and his disciples, that\nthey might there realise Plato\u2019s ideal republic.  Luckily for the\nreputation of Neoplatonism, the scheme was swamped by the courtiers of\nGallienus, and the earth was saved the sad and ludicrous sight of a\nrealised Laputa; probably a very quarrelsome one.  That was his highest\npractical conception: the foundation of a new society: not the\nregeneration of society as it existed.\n\nThat work was left for the Christian schools; and up to a certain point\nthey performed it.  They made men good.  _This_ was the test, which of\nthe schools was in the right: this was the test, which of the two had\nhold of the eternal roots of metaphysic.  Cicero says, that he had learnt\nmore philosophy from the Laws of the Twelve Tables than from all the\nGreeks.  Clement and his school might have said the same of the Hebrew\nTen Commandments and Jewish Law, which are so marvellously analogous to\nthe old Roman laws, founded, as they are, on the belief in a Supreme\nBeing, a Jupiter\u2014literally a Heavenly Father\u2014who is the source and the\nsanction of law; of whose justice man\u2019s justice is the pattern; who is\nthe avenger of crimes against marriage, property, life; on whom depends\nthe sanctity of an oath.  And so, to compare great things with small,\nthere was a truly practical human element here in the Christian teaching;\npurely ethical and metaphysical, and yet palpable to the simplest and\nlowest, which gave to it a regenerating force which the highest efforts\nof Neoplatonism could never attain.\n\nAnd yet Alexandrian Christianity, notoriously enough, rotted away, and\nperished hideously.  Most true.  But what if the causes of its decay and\ndeath were owing to its being untrue to itself?\n\nI do not say that they had no excuses for being untrue to their own\nfaith.  We are not here to judge them.  That peculiar subtlety of mind,\nwhich rendered the Alexandrians the great thinkers of the then world, had\nwith Christians, as well as Heathens, the effect of alluring them away\nfrom practice to speculation.  The Christian school, as was to be\nexpected from the moral ground of their philosophy, yielded to it far\nmore slowly than the Heathen, but they did yield, and especially after\nthey had conquered and expelled the Heathen school.  Moreover, the long\nbattle with the Heathen school had stirred up in them habits of\nexclusiveness, of denunciation; the spirit which cannot assert a fact,\nwithout dogmatising rashly and harshly on the consequences of denying\nthat fact.  Their minds assumed a permanent habit of combativeness.\nHaving no more Heathens to fight, they began fighting each other,\nexcommunicating each other; denying to all who differed from them any\nshare of that light, to claim which for all men had been the very ground\nof their philosophy.  Not that they would have refused the Logos to all\nmen in words.  They would have cursed a man for denying the existence of\nthe Logos in every man; but they would have equally cursed him for acting\non his existence in practice, and treating the heretic as one who had\nthat within him to which a preacher might appeal.  Thus they became\nDogmatists; that is, men who assert a truth so fiercely, as to forget\nthat a truth is meant to be used, and not merely asserted\u2014if, indeed, the\nfierce assertion of a truth in frail man is not generally a sign of some\nsecret doubt of it, and in inverse proportion to his practical living\nfaith in it: just as he who is always telling you that he is a man, is\nnot the most likely to behave like a man.  And why did this befall them?\nBecause they forgot practically that the light proceeded from a Person.\nThey could argue over notions and dogmas deduced from the notion of His\npersonality: but they were shut up in those notions; they had forgotten\nthat if He was a Person, His eye was on them, His rule and kingdom within\nthem; and that if He was a Person, He had a character, and that that\ncharacter was a righteous and a loving character: and therefore they were\nnot ashamed, in defending these notions and dogmas about Him, to commit\nacts abhorrent to His character, to lie, to slander, to intrigue, to\nhate, even to murder, for the sake of what they madly called His glory:\nbut which was really only their own glory\u2014the glory of their own dogmas;\nof propositions and conclusions in their own brain, which, true or false,\nwere equally heretical in their mouths, because they used them only as\nwatchwords of division.  Orthodox or unorthodox, they lost the knowledge\nof God, for they lost the knowledge of righteousness, and love, and\npeace.  That Divine Logos, and theology as a whole, receded further and\nfurther aloft into abysmal heights, as it became a mere dreary system of\ndead scientific terms, having no practical bearing on their hearts and\nlives; and then they, as the Neoplatonists had done before them, filled\nup the void by those d\u00e6monologies, images, base Fetish worships, which\nmade the Mohammedan invaders regard them, and I believe justly, as\npolytheists and idolaters, base as the pagan Arabs of the desert.\n\nI cannot but believe them, moreover, to have been untrue to the teaching\nof Clement and his school, in that coarse and materialist admiration of\ncelibacy which ruined Alexandrian society, as their dogmatic ferocity\nruined Alexandrian thought.  The Creed which taught them that in the\nperson of the Incarnate Logos, that which was most divine had been proved\nto be most human, that which was most human had been proved to be most\ndivine, ought surely to have given to them, as it has given to modern\nEurope, nobler, clearer, simpler views of the true relation of the sexes.\nHowever, on this matter they did not see their way.  Perhaps, in so\ndebased an age, so profligate a world, as that out of which Christianity\nhad risen, it was impossible to see the true beauty and sanctity of those\nprimary bonds of humanity.  And while the relation of the sexes was\nlooked on in a wrong light, all other social relations were necessarily\nalso misconceived.  \u201cThe very ideas of family and national life,\u201d as it\nhas been said, \u201cthose two divine roots of the Church, severed from which\nshe is certain to wither away into that most cruel and most godless of\nspectres, a religious world, had perished in the East, from the evil\ninfluence of the universal practice of slave-holding, as well as from the\ndegradation of that Jewish nation which had been for ages the great\nwitness for these ideas; and all classes, like their forefather\nAdam\u2014like, indeed, the Old Adam\u2014the selfish, cowardly, brute nature in\nevery man and in every age\u2014were shifting the blame of sin from their own\nconsciences to human relationships and duties, and therein, to the God\nwho had appointed them; and saying, as of old, \u2018The woman whom Thou\ngavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.\u2019\u201d\n\nMuch as Christianity did, even in Egypt, for woman, by asserting her\nmoral and spiritual equality with the man, there seems to have been no\nsuspicion that she was the true complement of the man, not merely by\nsoftening him, but by strengthening him; that true manhood can be no more\ndeveloped without the influence of the woman, than true womanhood without\nthe influence of the man.  There is no trace among the Egyptian celibates\nof that chivalrous woman-worship which our Gothic forefathers brought\nwith them into the West, which shed a softening and ennobling light round\nthe medi\u00e6val convent life, and warded off for centuries the worst effects\nof monasticism.  Among the religious of Egypt, the monk regarded the nun,\nthe nun the monk, with dread and aversion; while both looked on the\nmarried population of the opposite sex with a coarse contempt and disgust\nwhich is hardly credible, did not the foul records of it stand written to\nthis day, in Rosweyde\u2019s extraordinary \u201cVit\u00e6 Patrum Eremiticorum;\u201d no\nbarren school of metaphysic, truly, for those who are philosophic enough\nto believe that all phenomena whatsoever of the human mind are worthy\nmatter for scientific induction.\n\nAnd thus grew up in Egypt a monastic world, of such vastness that it was\nsaid to equal in number the laity.  This produced, no doubt, an enormous\nincrease in the actual amount of moral evil.  But it produced three other\neffects, which were the ruin of Alexandria.  First, a continually growing\nenervation and numerical decrease of the population; next, a carelessness\nof, and contempt for social and political life; and lastly, a most\nbrutalising effect on the lay population; who, told that they were, and\nbelieving themselves to be, beings of a lower order, and living by a\nlower standard, sank down more and more generation after generation.\nThey were of the world, and the ways of the world they must follow.\nPolitical life had no inherent sanctity or nobleness; why act holily and\nnobly in it?  Family life had no inherent sanctity or nobleness; why act\nholily and nobly in it either, if there were no holy, noble, and divine\nprinciple or ground for it?  And thus grew up, both in Egypt, Syria, and\nByzantium, a chaos of profligacy and chicanery, in rulers and people, in\nthe home and the market, in the theatre and the senate, such as the world\nhas rarely seen before or since; a chaos which reached its culmination in\nthe seventh century, the age of Justinian and Theodora, perhaps the two\nmost hideous sovereigns, worshipped by the most hideous empire of\nparasites and hypocrites, cowards and wantons, that ever insulted the\nlong-suffering of a righteous God.\n\nBut, for Alexandria at least, the cup was now full.  In the year 640 the\nAlexandrians were tearing each other in pieces about some Jacobite and\nMelchite controversy, to me incomprehensible, to you unimportant, because\nthe fighters on both sides seem to have lost (as all parties do in their\nold age) the knowledge of what they were fighting for, and to have so\nbewildered the question with personal intrigues, spites, and quarrels, as\nto make it nearly as enigmatic as that famous contemporary war between\nthe blue and green factions at Constantinople, which began by backing in\nthe theatre, the charioteers who drove in blue dresses, against those\nwild drove in green; then went on to identify themselves each with one of\nthe prevailing theological factions; gradually developed, the one into an\naristocratic, the other into a democratic, religious party; and ended by\na civil war in the streets of Constantinople, accompanied by the most\nhorrible excesses, which had nearly, at one time, given up the city to\nthe flames, and driven Justinian from his throne.\n\nIn the midst of these Jacobite and Melchite controversies and riots,\nappeared before the city the armies of certain wild and unlettered Arab\ntribes.  A short and fruitless struggle followed; and, strange to say, a\nfew months swept away from the face of the earth, not only the wealth,\nthe commerce, the castles, and the liberty, but the philosophy and the\nChristianity of Alexandria; crushed to powder by one fearful blow, all\nthat had been built up by Alexander and the Ptolemies, by Clement and the\nphilosophers, and made void, to all appearance, nine hundred years of\nhuman toil.  The people, having no real hold on their hereditary Creed,\naccepted, by tens of thousands, that of the Mussulman invaders.  The\nChristian remnant became tributaries; and Alexandria dwindled, from that\ntime forth, into a petty seaport town.\n\nAnd now\u2014can we pass over this new metaphysical school of Alexandria? Can\nwe help inquiring in what the strength of Islamism lay?  I, at least,\ncannot.  I cannot help feeling that I am bound to examine in what\nrelation the creed of Omar and Amrou stands to the Alexandrian\nspeculations of five hundred years, and how it had power to sweep those\nspeculations utterly from the Eastern mind.  It is a difficult problem;\nto me, as a Christian priest, a very awful problem.  What more awful\nhistoric problem, than to see the lower creed destroying the higher? to\nsee God, as it were, undoing his own work, and repenting Him that He had\nmade man?  Awful indeed: but I can honestly say, that it is one from the\ninvestigation of which I have learnt\u2014I cannot yet tell how much: and of\nthis I am sure, that without that old Alexandrian philosophy, I should\nnot have been able to do justice to Islam; without Islam I should not\nhave been able to find in that Alexandrian philosophy, an ever-living and\npractical element.\n\nI must, however, first entreat you to dismiss from your minds the vulgar\nnotion that Mohammed was in anywise a bad man, or a conscious deceiver,\npretending to work miracles, or to do things which he did not do.  He\nsinned in one instance: but, as far as I can see, only in that one\u2014I mean\nagainst what he must have known to be right.  I allude to his relaxing in\nhis own case those wise restrictions on polygamy which he had proclaimed.\nAnd yet, even in this case, the desire for a child may have been the true\ncause of his weakness.  He did not see the whole truth, of course: but he\nwas an infinitely better man than the men around: perhaps, all in all,\none of the best men of his day.  Many here may have read Mr. Carlyle\u2019s\nvindication of Mohammed in his Lectures on Hero Worship; to those who\nhave not, I shall only say, that I entreat them to do so; and that I\nassure them, that though I differ in many things utterly from Mr.\nCarlyle\u2019s inferences and deductions in that lecture, yet that I am\nconvinced, from my own acquaintance with the original facts and\ndocuments, that the picture there drawn of Mohammed is a true and a just\ndescription of a much-calumniated man.\n\nNow, what was the strength of Islam?  The common answer is, fanaticism\nand enthusiasm.  To such answers I can only rejoin: Such terms must be\ndefined before they are used, and we must be told what fanaticism and\nenthusiasm are.  Till then I have no more _\u00e0 priori_ respect for a long\nword ending in -ism or -asm than I have for one ending in -ation or\n-ality.  But while fanaticism and enthusiasm are being defined\u2014a work\nmore difficult than is commonly fancied\u2014we will go on to consider another\nanswer.  We are told that the strength of Islam lay in the hope of their\nsensuous Paradise and fear of their sensuous Gehenna.  If so, this is the\nfirst and last time in the world\u2019s history that the strength of any large\nbody of people\u2014perhaps of any single man\u2014lay in such a hope.  History\ngives us innumerable proofs that such merely selfish motives are the\nparents of slavish impotence, of pedantry and conceit, of pious frauds,\noften of the most devilish cruelty: but, as far as my reading extends, of\nnothing better.  Moreover, the Christian Greeks had much the same hopes\non those points as the Mussulmans; and similar causes should produce\nsimilar effects: but those hopes gave them no strength.  Besides,\naccording to the Mussulmans\u2019 own account, this was _not_ their great\ninspiring idea; and it is absurd to consider the wild battle-cries of a\nfew imaginative youths, about black-eyed and green-kerchiefed Houris\ncalling to them from the skies, as representing the average feelings of a\ngeneration of sober and self-restraining men, who showed themselves\nactuated by far higher motives.\n\nAnother answer, and one very popular now, is that the Mussulmans were\nstrong, because they believed what they said; and the Greeks weak,\nbecause they did not believe what they said.  From this notion I shall\nappeal to another doctrine of the very same men who put it forth, and ask\nthem, Can any man be strong by believing a lie?  Have you not told us,\nnobly enough, that every lie is by its nature rotten, doomed to death,\ncertain to prove its own impotence, and be shattered to atoms the moment\nyou try to use it, to bring it into rude actual contact with fact, and\nNature, and the eternal laws?  Faith to be strong must be faith in\nsomething which is not one\u2019s self; faith in something eternal, something\nobjective, something true, which would exist just as much though we and\nall the world disbelieved it.  The strength of belief comes from that\nwhich is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere\nself-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that\nwill give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed\nTitus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades,\nof the Munster Anabaptists, and many another sad page of human folly.  It\nmay give the fury of idiots; not the deliberate might of valiant men.\nLet us pass this by, then; believing that faith can only give strength\nwhere it is faith in something true and right: and go on to another\nanswer almost as popular as the last.\n\nWe are told that the might of Islam lay in a certain innate force and\nsavage virtue of the Arab character.  If we have discovered this in the\nfollowers of Mohammed, they certainly had not discovered it in\nthemselves.  They spoke of themselves, rightly or wrongly, as men who had\nreceived a divine light, and that light a moral light, to teach them to\nlove that which was good, and refuse that which was evil; and to that\ndivine light they stedfastly and honestly attributed every right action\nof their lives.  Most noble and affecting, in my eyes, is that answer of\nSaad\u2019s aged envoy to Yezdegird, king of Persia, when he reproached him\nwith the past savagery and poverty of the Arabs.  \u201cWhatsoever thou hast\nsaid,\u201d answered the old man, \u201cregarding the former condition of the Arabs\nis true.  Their food _was_ green lizards; they buried their infant\ndaughters alive; nay, some of them feasted on dead carcases, and drank\nblood; while others slew their kinsfolk, and thought themselves great and\nvaliant, when by so doing they became possessed of more property.  They\n_were_ clothed with hair garments, they knew not good from evil, and made\nno distinction between that which was lawful and unlawful.  Such was our\nstate; but God in his mercy has sent us, by a holy prophet, a sacred\nvolume, which teaches us the true faith.\u201d\n\nThese words, I think, show us the secret of Islam.  They are a just\ncomment on that short and rugged chapter of the Koran which is said to\nhave been Mohammed\u2019s first attempt either at prophecy or writing; when,\nafter long fasting and meditation among the desert hills, under the\nglorious eastern stars, he came down and told his good Kadijah that he\nhad found a great thing, and that she must help him to write it down.\nAnd what was this which seemed to the unlettered camel-driver so\npriceless a treasure?  Not merely that God was one God\u2014vast as that\ndiscovery was\u2014but that he was a God \u201cwho showeth to man the thing which\nhe knew not;\u201d a \u201cmost merciful God;\u201d a God, in a word, who could be\ntrusted; a God who would teach and strengthen; a God, as he said, who\nwould give him courage to set his face like a flint, and would put an\nanswer in his mouth when his idolatrous countrymen cavilled and sneered\nat his message to them, to turn from their idols of wood and stone, and\nbecome righteous men, as Abraham their forefather was righteous.\n\n\u201cA God who showeth to man the thing which he knew not.\u201d  That idea gave\nmight to Islam, because it was a real idea, an eternal fact; the result\nof a true insight into the character of God.  And that idea alone,\nbelieve me, will give conquering might either to creed, philosophy, or\nheart of man.  Each will be strong, each will endure, in proportion as it\nbelieves that God is one who shows to man the thing which he knew not: as\nit believes, in short, in that Logos of which Saint John wrote, that He\nwas the light who lightens every man who comes into the world.\n\nIn a word, the wild Koreish had discovered, more or less clearly, that\nend and object of all metaphysic whereof I have already spoken so often;\nthat external and imperishable beauty for which Plato sought of old; and\nhad seen that its name was righteousness, and that it dwelt absolutely in\nan absolutely righteous person; and moreover, that this person was no\ncareless self-contented epicurean deity; but that He was, as they loved\nto call Him, the most merciful God; that He cared for men; that He\ndesired to make men righteous.  Of that they could not doubt.  The fact\nwas palpable, historic, present.  To them the degraded Koreish of the\ndesert, who as they believed, and I think believed rightly, had fallen\nfrom the old Monotheism of their forefathers Abraham and Ismael, into the\nlowest fetishism, and with that into the lowest brutality and\nwretchedness\u2014to them, while they were making idols of wood and stone;\neating dead carcases; and burying their daughters alive; careless of\nchastity, of justice, of property; sunk in unnatural crimes, dead in\ntrespasses and sins; hateful and hating one another\u2014a man, one of their\nown people had come, saying: \u201cI have a message from the one righteous\nGod.  His curse is on all this, for it is unlike Himself.  He will have\nyou righteous men, after the pattern of your forefather Abraham.  Be\nthat, and arise, body, soul, and spirit, out of your savagery and\nbrutishness.  Then you shall be able to trample under font the profligate\nidolaters, to sweep the Greek tyrants from the land which they have been\noppressing for centuries, and to recover the East for its rightful heirs,\nthe children of Abraham.\u201d  Was this not, in every sense, a message from\nGod?  I must deny the philosophy of Clement and Augustine, I must deny my\nown conscience, my own reason, I must outrage my own moral sense, and\nconfess that I have no immutable standard of right, that I know no\neternal source of right, if I deny it to have been one; if I deny what\nseems to me the palpable historic fact, that those wild Koreish had in\nthem a reason and a conscience, which could awaken to that message, and\nperceive its boundless beauty, its boundless importance, and that they\ndid accept that message, and lived by it in proportion as they received\nit fully, such lives as no men in those times, and few in after times,\nhave been able to live.  If I feel, as I do feel, that Abubekr, Omar, Abu\nObeidah, and Amrou, were better men than I am, I must throw away all that\nPhilo\u2014all that a Higher authority\u2014has taught me: or I must attribute\ntheir lofty virtues to the one source of all in man which is not\nselfishness, and fancy, and fury, and blindness as of the beasts which\nperish.\n\nWhy, then, has Islamism become one of the most patent and complete\nfailures upon earth, if the true test of a system\u2019s success be the\ngradual progress and amelioration of the human beings who are under its\ninfluence?  First, I believe, from its allowing polygamy.  I do not judge\nMohammed for having allowed it.  He found it one of the ancestral and\nimmemorial customs of his nation.  He found it throughout the Hebrew\nScriptures.  He found it in the case of Abraham, his ideal man; and, as\nhe believed, the divinely-inspired ancestor of his race.  It seemed to\nhim that what was right for Abraham, could not be wrong for an Arab.  God\nshall judge him, not I.  Moreover, the Christians of the East, divided\ninto either monks or profligates; and with far lower and more brutal\nnotions of the married state than were to be found in Arab poetry and\nlegend, were the very last men on earth to make him feel the eternal and\ndivine beauty of that pure wedded love which Christianity has not only\nproclaimed, but commanded, and thereby emancipated woman from her old\nslavery to the stronger sex.  And I believe, from his chivalrous\nfaithfulness to his good wife Kadijah, as long as she lived, that\nMohammed was a man who could have accepted that great truth in all its\nfulness, had he but been taught it.  He certainly felt the evil of\npolyamy so strongly as to restrict it in every possible way, except the\nonly right way\u2014namely, the proclamation of the true ideal of marriage.\nBut his ignorance, mistake, sin, if you will, was a deflection from the\nright law, from the true constitution of man, and therefore it avenged\nitself.  That chivalrous respect for woman, which was so strong in the\nearly Mohammedans, died out.  The women themselves\u2014who, in the first few\nyears of Islamism, rose as the men rose, and became their helpmates,\ncounsellors, and fellow-warriors\u2014degenerated rapidly into mere\nplaythings.  I need not enter into the painful subject of woman\u2019s present\nposition in the East, and the social consequences thereof.  But I firmly\nbelieve, not merely as a theory, but as a fact which may be proved by\nabundant evidence, that to polygamy alone is owing nine-tenths of the\npresent decay and old age of every Mussulman nation; and that till it be\nutterly abolished, all Western civilisation and capital, and all the\ncivil and religious liberty on earth, will not avail one jot toward their\nrevival.  You must regenerate the family before you can regenerate the\nnation, and the relation of husband and wife before the family; because,\nas long as the root is corrupt, the fruit will be corrupt also.\n\nBut there is another cause of the failure of Islamism, more intimately\nconnected with those metaphysical questions which we have been hitherto\nprincipally considering.\n\nAmong the first Mussulmans, as I have said, there was generally the most\nintense belief in each man that he was personally under a divine guide\nand teacher.  But their creed contained nothing which could keep up that\nbelief in the minds of succeeding generations.  They had destroyed the\ngood with the evil, and they paid the penalty of their undistinguishing\nwrath.  In sweeping away the idolatries and fetish worships of the Syrian\nCatholics, the Mussulmans had swept away also that doctrine which alone\ncan deliver men from idolatry and fetish worships\u2014if not outward and\nmaterial ones, yet the still more subtle, and therefore more dangerous\nidolatries of the intellect.  For they had swept away the belief in the\nLogos; in a divine teacher of every human soul, who was, in some\nmysterious way, the pattern and antitype of human virtue and wisdom.  And\nmore, they had swept away that belief in the incarnation of the Logos,\nwhich alone can make man feel that his divine teacher is one who can\nenter into the human duties, sorrows, doubts, of each human spirit.  And,\ntherefore, when Mohammed and his personal friends were dead, the belief\nin a present divine teacher, on the whole, died with them; and the\nMussulmans began to put the Koran in the place of Him of whom the Koran\nspoke.  They began to worship the book\u2014which after all is not a book, but\nonly an irregular collection of Mohammed\u2019s meditations, and notes for\nsermons\u2014with the most slavish and ridiculous idolatry.  They fell into a\ncabbalism, and a superstitious reverence for the mere letters and words\nof the Koran, to which the cabbalism of the old Rabbis was moderate and\nrational.  They surrounded it, and the history of Mohammed, with all\nridiculous myths, and prodigies, and lying wonders, whereof the book\nitself contained not a word; and which Mohammed, during his existence,\nhad denied and repudiated, saying that he worked no miracles, and that\nnone were needed; because only reason was required to show a man the hand\nof a good God in all human affairs.  Nevertheless, these later Mussulmans\nfound the miracles necessary to confirm their faith: and why?  Because\nthey had lost the sense of a present God, a God of order; and therefore\nhankered, as men in such a mood always will, after prodigious and\nunnatural proofs of His having been once present with their founder\nMohammed.\n\nAnd in the meanwhile that absolute and omnipotent Being whom Mohammed,\narising out of his great darkness, had so nobly preached to the Koreish,\nreceded in the minds of their descendants to an unapproachable and\nabysmal distance.  For they had lost the sense of His present guidance,\nHis personal care.  They had lost all which could connect Him with the\nworking of their own souls, with their human duties and struggles, with\nthe belief that His mercy and love were counterparts of human mercy and\nhuman love; in plain English, that He was loving and merciful at all.\nThe change came very gradually, thank God; you may read of noble sayings\nand deeds here and there, for many centuries after Mohammed: but it came;\nand then their belief in God\u2019s omnipotence and absoluteness dwindled into\nthe most dark, and slavish, and benumbing fatalism.  His unchangeableness\nbecame in their minds not an unchangeable purpose to teach, forgive, and\ndeliver men\u2014as it seemed to Mohammed to have been\u2014but a mere brute\nnecessity, an unchangeable purpose to have His own way, whatsoever that\nway might be.  That dark fatalism, also, has helped toward the decay of\nthe Mohammedan nations.  It has made them careless of self-improvement;\nfaithless of the possibility of progress; and has kept, and will keep,\nthe Mohammedan nations, in all intellectual matters, whole ages behind\nthe Christian nations of the West.\n\nHow far the story of Omar\u2019s commanding the baths of Alexandria to be\nheated with the books from the great library is true, we shall never\nknow.  Some have doubted the story altogether: but so many fresh\ncorroborations of it are said to have been lately discovered, in Arabic\nwriters, that I can hardly doubt that it had some foundation in fact.\nOne cannot but believe that John Philoponus, the last of the Alexandrian\ngrammarians, when he asked his patron Amrou the gift of the library, took\ncare to save some, at least, of its treasures; and howsoever strongly\nOmar may have felt or said that all books which agreed with the Koran\nwere useless, and all which disagreed with it only fit to be destroyed,\nthe general feeling of the Mohammedan leaders was very different.  As\nthey settled in the various countries which they conquered, education\nseems to have been considered by them an important object.  We even find\nsome of them, in the same generation as Mohammed, obeying strictly the\nProphet\u2019s command to send all captive children to school\u2014a fact which\nspeaks as well for the Mussulmans\u2019 good sense, as it speaks ill for the\nstate of education among the degraded descendants of the Greek conquerors\nof the East.  Gradually philosophic Schools arose, first at Bagdad, and\nthen at Cordova; and the Arabs carried on the task of commenting on\nAristotle\u2019s Logic, and Ptolemy\u2019s Megiste Syntaxis\u2014which last acquired\nfrom them the name of Almagest, by which it was so long known during the\nMiddle Ages.\n\nBut they did little but comment, though there was no Neoplatonic or\nmystic element in their commentaries.  It seems as if Alexandria was\npreordained, by its very central position, to be the city of\ncommentators, not of originators.  It is worthy of remark, that\nPhiloponus, who may be considered as the man who first introduced the\nsimple warriors of the Koreish to the treasures of Greek thought, seems\nto have been the first rebel against the Neoplatonist eclecticism.  He\nmaintained, and truly, that Porphyry, Proclus, and the rest, had entirely\nmisunderstood Aristotle, when they attempted to reconcile him with Plato,\nor incorporate his philosophy into Platonism.  Aristotle was henceforth\nthe text-book of Arab savants.  It was natural enough.  The Mussulman\nmind was trained in habits of absolute obedience to the authority of\nfixed dogmas.  All those attempts to follow out metaphysic to its highest\nobject, theology, would be useless if not wrong in the eyes of a\nMussulman, who had already his simple and sharply-defined creed on all\nmatters relating to the unseen world.  With him metaphysic was a study\naltogether divorced from man\u2019s higher life and aspirations.  So also were\nphysics.  What need had he of Cosmogonies? what need to trace the\nrelations between man and the universe, or the universe and its Maker?\nHe had his definite material Elysium and Tartarus, as the only ultimate\nrelation between man and the universe; his dogma of an absolute fiat,\ncreating arbitrary and once for all, as the only relation between the\nuniverse and its Maker: and further it was not lawful to speculate.  The\nidea which I believe unites both physic and metaphysic with man\u2019s highest\ninspirations and widest speculations\u2014the Alexandria idea of the Logos, of\nthe Deity working in time and space by successive thoughts\u2014he had not\nheard of; for it was dead, as I have said, in Alexandria itself; and if\nhe had heard of it, he would have spurned it as detracting from the\nabsoluteness of that abysmal one Being, of whom he so nobly yet so\npartially bore witness.  So it was to be; doubtless it was right that it\nshould be so.  Man\u2019s eye is too narrow to see a whole truth, his brain\ntoo weak to carry a whole truth.  Better for him, and better for the\nworld, is perhaps the method on which man has been educated in every age,\nby which to each school, or party, or nation, is given some one great\ntruth, which they are to work out to its highest development, to\nexemplify in actual life, leaving some happier age\u2014perhaps, alas! only\nsome future state\u2014to reconcile that too favoured dogma with other truths\nwhich lie beside it, and without which it is always incomplete, and\nsometimes altogether barren.\n\nBut such schools of science, founded on such a ground as this, on the\nmere instinct of curiosity, had little chance of originality or vitality.\nAll the great schools of the world, the elder Greek philosophy, the\nAlexandrian, the present Baconian school of physics, have had a deeper\nmotive for their search, a far higher object which they hope to discover.\nBut indeed, the Mussulmans did not so much wish to discover truth, as to\ncultivate their own intellects.  For that purpose a sharp and subtle\nsystematist, like Aristotle, was the very man whom they required; and\nfrom the destruction of Alexandria may date the rise of the Aristotelian\nphilosophy.  Translations of his works were made into Arabic, first, it\nis said, from Persian and Syriac translations; the former of which had\nbeen made during the sixth and seventh centuries, by the wreck of the\nNeoplatonist party, during their visit to the philosophic Chozroos.  A\ncentury after, they filled Alexandria.  After them Almansoor, Hairoun\nAlraschid, and their successors, who patronised the Nestorian Christians,\nobtained from them translations of the philosophic, medical, and\nastronomical Greek works; while the last of the Omniades, Abdalrahman,\nhad introduced the same literary taste into Spain, where, in the\nthirteenth century, Averro\u00ebs and Maimonides rivalled the fame of\nAvicenna, who had flourished at Bagdad a century before.\n\nBut, as I have said already, these Arabs seem to have invented nothing;\nthey only commented.  And yet not only commented; for they preserved for\nus those works of whose real value they were so little aware.  Averro\u00ebs,\nin quality of commentator on Aristotle, became his rival in the minds of\nthe medi\u00e6val schoolmen; Avicenna, in quality of commentator on\nHippocrates and Galen, was for centuries the text-book of all European\nphysicians; while Albatani and Aboul Wefa, as astronomers, commented on\nPtolemy, not however without making a few important additions to his\nknowledge; for Aboul Wefa discovered a third inequality of the moon\u2019s\nmotion, in addition to the two mentioned by Ptolemy, which he did,\naccording to Professor Whewell, in a truly philosophic manner\u2014an\napparently solitary instance, and one which, in its own day, had no\neffect; for the fact was forgotten, and rediscovered centuries after by\nTycho Brahe.  To Albatani, however, we owe two really valuable heirlooms.\nThe one is the use of the sine, or half-chord of the double arc, instead\nof the chord of the arc itself, which had been employed by the Greek\nastronomers; the other, of even more practical benefit, was the\nintroduction of the present decimal arithmetic, instead of the\ntroublesome sexagesimal arithmetic of the Greeks.  These ten digits,\nhowever, seem, says Professor Whewell, by the confession of the Arabians\nthemselves, to be of Indian origin, and thus form no exception to the\nsterility of the Arabian genius in scientific inventions.  Nevertheless\nwe are bound, in all fairness, to set against his condemnation of the\nArabs Professor De Morgan\u2019s opinion of the Moslem, in his article on\nEuclid: \u201cSome writers speak slightingly of this progress, the results of\nwhich they are too apt to compare with those of our own time.  They ought\nrather to place the Saracens by the side of their own Gothic ancestors;\nand making some allowance for the more advantageous circumstances under\nwhich the first started, they should view the second systematically\ndispersing the remains of Greek civilisation, while the first were\nconcentrating the geometry of Alexandria, the arithmetic and algebra of\nIndia, and the astronomy of both, to form a nucleus for the present state\nof science.\u201d\n\nTo this article of Professor De Morgan\u2019s on Euclid, {127} and to\nProfessor Whewell\u2019s excellent \u201cHistory of the Inductive Sciences,\u201d from\nwhich I, being neither Arabic scholar nor astronomer, have drawn most of\nmy facts about physical science, I must refer those who wish to know more\nof the early rise of physics, and of their preservation by the Arabs,\ntill a great and unexpected event brought them back again to the quarter\nof the globe where they had their birth, and where alone they could be\nregenerated into a new and practical life.\n\nThat great event was the Crusades.  We have heard little of Alexandria\nlately.  Its intellectual glory had departed westward and eastward, to\nCordova and to Bagdad; its commercial greatness had left it for Cairo and\nDamietta.  But Egypt was still the centre of communication between the\ntwo great stations of the Moslem power, and indeed, as Mr. Lane has shown\nin his most valuable translation of the \u201cArabian Nights,\u201d possessed a\npeculiar life and character of its own.\n\nIt was the rash object of the Crusaders to extinguish that life.\nPalestine was their first point of attack: but the later Crusaders seem\nto have found, like the rest of the world, that the destinies of\nPalestine could not be separated from those of Egypt; and to Damietta,\naccordingly, was directed that last disastrous attempt of St. Louis,\nwhich all may read so graphically described in the pages of Joinville.\n\nThe Crusaders failed utterly of the object at which they aimed.  They\nsucceeded in an object of which they never dreamed; for in those Crusades\nthe Moslem and the Christian had met face to face, and found that both\nwere men, that they had a common humanity, a common eternal standard of\nnobleness and virtue.  So the Christian knights went home humbler and\nwiser men, when they found in the Saracen emirs the same generosity,\ntruth, mercy, chivalrous self-sacrifice, which they had fancied their own\npeculiar possession, and added to that, a civilisation and a learning\nwhich they could only admire and imitate.  And thus, from the era of the\nCrusades, a kindlier feeling sprang up between the Crescent and the\nCross, till it was again broken by the fearful invasions of the Turks\nthroughout Eastern Europe.  The learning of the Moslem, as well as their\ncommerce, began to pour rapidly into Christendom, both from Spain, Egypt,\nand Syria; and thus the Crusaders were, indeed, rewarded according to\ntheir deeds.  They had fancied that they were bound to vindicate the\npossession of the earth for Him to whom they believed the earth belonged.\nHe showed them\u2014or rather He has shown us, their children\u2014that He can\nvindicate His own dominion better far than man can do it for Him; and\ntheir cruel and unjust aim was utterly foiled.  That was not the way to\nmake men know or obey Him.  They took the sword, and perished by the\nsword.  But the truly noble element in them\u2014the element which our hearts\nand reasons recognise and love, in spite of all the loud words about the\nfolly and fanaticism of the Crusades, whensoever we read \u201cThe Talisman\u201d\nor \u201cIvanhoe\u201d\u2014the element of loyal faith and self-sacrifice\u2014did not go\nunrequited.  They learnt wider, juster views of man and virtue, which I\ncannot help believing must have had great effect in weakening in their\nminds their old, exclusive, and bigoted notions, and in paving the way\nfor the great outburst of free thought, and the great assertion of the\ndignity of humanity, which the fifteenth century beheld.  They opened a\npath for that influx of scientific knowledge which has produced, in after\ncenturies, the most enormous effects on the welfare of Europe, and made\nlife possible for millions who would otherwise have been pent within the\nnarrow bounds of Europe, to devour each other in the struggle for room\nand bread.\n\nBut those Arabic translations of Greek authors were a fatal gift for\nEgypt, and scarcely less fatal gift for Bagdad.  In that Almagest of\nPtolemy, in that Organon of Aristotle, which the Crusaders are said to\nhave brought home, lay, rude and embryotic, the germs of that physical\nscience, that geographical knowledge which has opened to the European the\ncommerce and the colonisation of the globe.  Within three hundred years\nafter his works reached Europe, Ptolemy had taught the Portuguese to sail\nround Africa; and from that day the stream of eastern wealth flowed no\nlonger through the Red Sea, or the Persian Gulf, on its way to the new\ncountries of the West; and not only Alexandria, but Damietta and Bagdad,\ndwindled down to their present insignificance.  And yet the whirligig of\ntime brings about its revenges.  The stream of commerce is now rapidly\nturning back to its old channel; and British science bids fair to make\nAlexandria once more the inn of all the nations.\n\nIt is with a feeling of awe that one looks upon the huge possibilities of\nher future.  Her own physical capacities, as the great mind of Napoleon\nsaw, are what they always have been, inexhaustible; and science has\nlearnt to set at naught the only defect of situation which has ever\ninjured her prosperity, namely, the short land passage from the Nile to\nthe Red Sea.  The fate of Palestine is now more than ever bound up with\nher fate; and a British or French colony might, holding the two\ncountries, develop itself into a nation as vast as sprang from\nAlexander\u2019s handful of Macedonians, and become the meeting point for the\nnations of the West and those great Anglo-Saxon peoples who seem destined\nto spring up in the Australian ocean.  Wide as the dream may appear,\nsteam has made it a far narrower one than the old actual fact, that for\ncenturies the Phoenician and the Arabian interchanged at Alexandria the\nproduce of Britain for that of Ceylon and Hindostan.  And as for\nintellectual development, though Alexandria wants, as she has always\nwanted, that insular and exclusive position which seems almost necessary\nto develop original thought and original national life, yet she may still\nact as the point of fusion for distinct schools and polities, and the\nyoung and buoyant vigour of the new-born nations may at once teach, and\nlearn from, the prudence, the experience, the traditional wisdom of the\nancient Europeans.\n\nThis vision, however possible, may be a far-off one: but the first step\ntowards it, at least, is being laid before our eyes\u2014and that is, a fresh\nreconciliation between the Crescent and the Cross.  Apart from all\npolitical considerations, which would be out of place here, I hail, as a\nstudent of philosophy, the school which is now, both in Alexandria and in\nConstantinople, teaching to Moslem and to Christians the same lesson\nwhich the Crusaders learnt in Egypt five hundred years ago.  A few years\u2019\nmore perseverance in the valiant and righteous course which Britain has\nnow chosen, will reward itself by opening a vast field for capital and\nenterprise, for the introduction of civil and religious liberty among the\ndown-trodden peasantry of Egypt; as the Giaour becomes an object of\nrespect, and trust, and gratitude to the Moslem; and as the feeling that\nMoslem and Giaour own a common humanity, a common eternal standard of\njustice and mercy, a common sacred obligation to perform our promises,\nand to succour the oppressed, shall have taken place of the old brute\nwonder at our careless audacity, and awkward assertion of power, which\nnow expresses itself in the somewhat left-handed Alexandrian\ncompliment\u2014\u201cThere is one Satan, and there are many Satans: but there is\nno Satan like a Frank in a round hat.\u201d\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nIt would be both uncourteous and unfair of me to close these my hasty\nLectures, without expressing my hearty thanks for the great courtesy and\nkindness which I have received in this my first visit to your most noble\nand beautiful city; and often, I am proud to say, from those who differ\nfrom me deeply on many important points; and also for the attention with\nwhich I have been listened to while trying, clumsily enough, to explain\ndry and repulsive subjects, and to express opinions which may be new, and\nperhaps startling, to many of my hearers.  If my imperfect hints shall\nhave stirred up but one hearer to investigate this obscure and yet most\nimportant subject, and to examine for himself the original documents, I\nshall feel that my words in this place have not been spoken in vain; for\neven if such a seeker should arrive at conclusions different from my own\n(and I pretend to no infallibility), he will at least have learnt new\nfacts, the parents of new thought, perhaps of new action; he will have\ncome face to face with new human beings, in whom he will have been\ncompelled to take a human interest; and will surely rise from his\nresearches, let them lead him where they will, at least somewhat of a\nwider-minded and a wider-hearted man.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES.\n\n\n{3}  These Lectures were delivered at the Philosophical Institution,\nEdinburgh, in February, 1854, at the commencement of the Crimean War.\n\n{127}  Smith\u2019s \u201cClassical Dictionary.\u201d","title":"Alexandria and Her Schools: Four Lectures Delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38148}