Part 1 (1/2)

Alexandria and her Schools

by Charles Kingsley

PREFACE

I should not have presumed to choose for any lectures of mine such a subject as that which I have tried to treat in this book The subject was chosen by the Institution where the lectures were delivered Still less should I have presumentary and crude they are They were printed at the special request of ht I to have presue, where any inaccuracy or sciolises, I cannot but fear) would be instantly detected, and severely censured: but nevertheless, it seee was the fittest place in which they could see the light, because to Cahtwhich I have ever written In the heyday of youthful greediness and ambition, when the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the universe, , at once and on the spot, too many are apt, as I have been in past years, to coe studies as too dry and narrow: but as time teaches the student, year by year, what is really required for an understanding of the objects hich he ins to find that his University, in as far as he has really received her teaching into hiiven him, in her criticis which all the popular knowledge, the lectures and institutions of the day, and even good books the; na into his lazy lap treasures which he would not have kno to use, she has taught hiratify his intellectual greediness, excited his hunger, only that he er to hunt and till for his own subsistence; and thus, the deeper he drinks, in after years, at fountains wisely forbidden to hie student, and sees his old co up into sound-headed and sound-hearted practical round for thought and action, he learns to coe studies, and more and more of that conceit and haste of his ohich kept hi

These Lectures, as I have said, are altogether crude and frag with so vast a subject, and so long a period of time? They are meant neither as Essays nor as Orations, but simply as a collection of hints to those who may wish to work out the subject for theliht of which the spiritual history of Alexandria, and perhaps of other countries also, anic method

I was of course compelled, by the circumstances under which these Lectures were delivered, to keep clear of all points which are commonly called ”controversial” I cannot but feel that this was a gain, rather than a loss; because it forced ive any interpretation at all of Alexandrian thought, any Theodicy at all of her fate, to refer to lahich I cannot but believe to be deeper, wider, more truly eternal than the points which cause ical or political; lahich will, I cannot but believe also, reassert themselves, and have to be reasserted by all wise teachers, very soon indeed, and it e in their eternal spirit

For I o would have only excited laughter), that I cannot but subscribe to the opinion of the ral part thereof, is on the eve of a revolution, spiritual and political, as vast and awful as that which took place at the Reformation; and that, beneficial as that revolution will doubtless be to the destinies of e of each nation individually, whether that great deluge shall issue, as the Reforrowth of European nobleness and strength or usher in, after pitiable confusions and sorrows, a second Byzantine age of stereotyped effeminacy and imbecility For I have as little syress of the species, and the advent of I know-not-what cockaigne of universal peace and plenty, as I have with those who believe on the strength of ”unfulfilled prophecy,” the downfall of Christianity, and the end of the human race to be at hand Nevertheless, one reat crisis, as it is in every great crisis, although one be unable to conceive by whatup of the Euphrates can be twisted to signify the fall of Constantinople: and one can well believe that a day of judgment is at hand, in which for every nation and institution, the wheat will be sifted out and gathered into God's garner, for the use of future generations, and the chaff burnt up with that fire unquenchable which will try everyof opinion that after a few reat ned hopelessly to never-ending tore tobut a cabbala, useless either to the si of a few devout fancies, it eable God is governing, and has always governed, the hu what has happened, can we understand ill happen; only by understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that notout--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few na to discover its organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and systee, decay and death If, in one sle ray of light upon these subjects--if I shall have done anything in these pages towards illustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall believe that I have done better service to the Catholic Faith and the Scriptures, than if I did really ”know the times and the seasons, which the Father has kept in His own hand” For by the former act I may have helped to make some one man more prudent and brave to see and to do what God requires of him; by the latter I could only add to that paralysis of superstitious fear, which is already but too co our duty ainst our real foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny abroad

These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to say a feords I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some allusion to the present war To have entered further into political questions would have been improper in the place where those Lectures were delivered: but I cannot refrain fro more on this matter; and that, first, because all political questions have their real root in moral and spiritual ones, and not (as tooto the balance of power or couidance of a spiritual, and not a physical Being) finally decided on those spiritual grounds, and according to the just laws of the kingdom of God; and, therefore, the future political horoscope of the East depends entirely on the present spiritual state of its inhabitants, and of us who have (and rightly) taken up their cause; in short, on many of those questions on which I have touched in these Lectures: and next, because I feel bound, in justice toor supposition that I consider the Turkish eer on the face of God's earth

The Turkish ehteous and worthless thing It stands no longer upon the assertion of the great truth of Isla since lost the only excuse which one race can have for holding another in subjection; that which we have for taking on ourselves the tutelage of the Hindoos, and which Royptians; naovern the the them to submit to law

I do not knohen this excuse is a sufficient one God showed that it was so for several centuries in the case of the Romans; God will shohether it is in the case of our Indian empire: but this I say, that the Turkish empire has not even that excuse to plead; as is proved by the patent fact that the whole East, the very garden of the old world, has becooverneneration of Turkey, it is a question whether the regeneration of any nation which has sunk, not into ate luxury, is possible Still eneration can be effected, not by the rise of a new spiritual idea (as in the case of the Koreish), but simply by more perfect ives no instance, it seeenerate Greece by freeing it has been an utter failure, much more, it seems to me, would any such attempt fail in the case of the Turkish race For what can be done with a people which has lost the one great quality which was the tenure of its existence, its military skill? Let any one read the accounts of the Turkish armies in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when they were the tutors and models of all Europe in the art of war, and then consider the fact that those very arn adventurers, in order to ether, and let him ask himself seriously, whether such a fall can ever be recovered When, in the age of Theodosius, and again in that of Justinian, the Roman arions required to be led by Stilicho the Vandal, and the Byzantine by Belisar the Sclav and Narses the Persian, the end of all things was at hand, and came; as it will come soon to Turkey

But if Turkey deserves to fall, and must fall, it ed upon it: but wrong , or the penalty is only passed on froood is left in the Turk, to that wehi him to a quiet euthanasia, and absorption into a worthier race of successors He is said (I know not how truly) to have one virtue left; that of faithfulness to his word Only by showing him that we too abhor treachery and bad faith, can we either do hiround in our own peril And this we have done; and for this we shall be rewarded But this is surely not all our duty Even if we should be able to ious freedom of the Eastern Christians the price of our assistance to the Mussulle will not be over; for Russia will still be what she has always been, and the northern Anarch will be checked, only to return to the contest with fiercer lust of aggrandiseainst a new Greece, divided, not united, by the treacherous bond of that balance of pohich is but war under the guise of peace

Europe needs a holier and iven by armed neutralities, and the so-called cause of order She needs such a bond as in the Elizabethan age united the free states of Europe against the Anarch of Spain, and delivered the Western nations fro world-tyranny, which promised to be even land shall proclaim herself the champion of freedom by acts, and not by words and paper, she may, as she did then, defy the rulers of the darkness of this world, for the God of Light will be with her But, as yet, it is is upon the destiny of a war, begun upon the express understanding that evil shall be left triuhout Europe, wheresoever that evil does not seehtedness, to threaten us with ier; with promises, that under the hollow name of the Cause of Order--and that proary, Poland, Sweden, shall remain unredressed, and that Prussia and Austria, two tyrannies, the one far more false and hypocritical, the other even more rotten than that of Turkey, shall, if they will but observe a hollow and uncertain neutrality (for who can trust the liar and the oppressor?)--be allowed not only to keep their ill-gotten spoils, but even now to play into the hands of our foe, by guarding his Polish frontier for hi down the victi down those of their own

It is true, the alternative is an awful one; one from which statesmen and nations may well shrink: but it is a question, whether that alternative may not be forced upon us sooner or later, whether we must not from the first look it boldly in the face, as that which must be some day, and for which we must prepare, not cowardly, and with cries about God's wrath and judgainst us--which would be abject, were they not expressed in such second-hand stock-phrases as to ether doubt their sincerity, but chivalrously, and with awful joy, as a noble calling, an honour put upon us by the God of Nations, who demands of us, as some small return for all His free bounties, that we should be, in this great crisis, the champions of Freedom and of Justice, which are the cause of God At all events, we shall not escape our duty by being afraid of it; we shall not escape our duty by inventing to ourselves so it ”Order”

Elizabeth did so at first She tried to keep the peace with Spain; she shrank fro the cause of Order (then a nobler one than now, because it was the cause of Loyalty, and notthe Scotch and the Netherlanders: but her duty was forced upon her; and she did it at last, cheerfully, boldly, utterly, like a hero; she put herself at the head of the battle for the freedom of the world, and she conquered, for God ith her; and so that seeland's perils, when the realof it was seen, and God's will in it obeyed land's naval and colonial elories So it was then, so it is now; so it will be for ever: he who seeks to save his life will lose it: he illingly throay his life for the cause of mankind, which is the cause of God, the Father of mankind, he shall save it, and be rewarded a hundred-fold

That God rant us, the children of the Elizabethan heroes, all wisdoe to do it, even to the death, should be our earliest prayer Our states, in spite of hot-headed cla as there was any chance of a peaceful settle wisely and well now in declining to throay the scabbard as long as there is hope that a determined front will awe the offender into submission: but the day rant that they e to do it

It is reported that our rulers have said, that English diplonise ”nationalities,” but only existing ”governrant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as a spiritual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the central idea of English policy; the idea by faith in which she delivered first herself, and then the Protestant nations of the Continent, successively from the yokes of Rome, of Spain, of France; and that they ain, let the apparent cost be what it may

It is true, that this end will not be attained without what is called nowadays ”a destruction of human life” But we have yet to learn (at least if the doctrines which I have tried to illustrate in this little book have any truth in the away human life; and to believe, if we believe our Bibles, that human life can only be destroyed by sin, and that all which is lost in battle is that animal life of which it is written, ”Fear not those who can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do: but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear; him who, after he has killed, has power to destroy both body and soul in hell” Let adevil, and fear therefore cowardice, disloyalty, selfishness, sluggishness, which are his works, and to be utterly afraid of which is to be truly brave God grant that we of the clergywar, and instead of weakening the righteous courage and honour of our country into them selfish and superstitious fears, and a theory of the future state which represents God, not as a saviour, but a tormentor, may boldly tell the; for all live unto Him;” and that he who renders up his ani, in the cause of duty, commits his real and human life, his very soul and self, into the hands of a just and ood deed unrewarded, and least of all thatlike a land, but of the freedom and national life of half the world

LECTURE I--THE PTOLEMAIC ERA

Before I begin to lecture upon the Physical and Metaphysical schools of Alexandria, itof these two epithets Physical, we shall all agree, s to [Greek text: phusis]; natura; nature, that which [Greek text: phuetai], nascitur, grows, by an organic life, and therefore decays again; which has a beginning, and therefore, I presume, an end And Metaphysical means that which we learn to think of after we think of nature; that which is supernatural, in fact, having neither beginning nor end, imperishable, immovable, and eternal, which does not become, but always is These, at least, are the wisest definitions of these two terms for us just now; for they are those which were received by the whole Alexandrian school, even by those commentators who say that Aristotle, the inventor of the term Metaphysics, na in philosophic sequence his book on Physics

But, according to these definitions, the whole history of Alexandria ht be to us, from one point of view, a physical school; for Alexandria, its society and its philosophy, were born, and grew, and fed, and reached their vigour, and had their old age, their death, even as a plant or an animal has; and after they were dead and dissolved, the atoanisations, just as the atoht do

Was Alexandria then, fro to end, merely a natural and physical phenomenon?

It may have been And yet we cannot deny that Alexandria was also athat it held for sohteen hundred years a population of several hundred thousand souls; each of who to the Alexandrian philosophy, stood in a very intis which are imperishable and immovable and eternal, and indeed, contained them more or less, eachwills, reasons, consciences, affections, relations to each other; being parents, children, help, and numberless other unseen and spiritual relations

Surely such a body was not merely natural, any more than any other nation, society, or scientific school, hts, affections of men It, like the and healthy, in as far as it was in har laws of God; perhaps, as certain Alexandrian philosophers would have held, in as far as it was a pattern of that ideal constitution and polity after which man was created, the city of God which is eternal in the Heavens If so, may we not suspect of this Alexandria that it was its own fault if it became a merely physical phenomenon; and that it stooped to becos which are born to die, only by breaking the lahich God had appointed for it; so fulfilling, in its own case, St Paul's great words, that death entered into the world by sin, and that sin is the transgression of the law?