Was Alexandria then, from beginning to end, merely a natural and
physical phenomenon?
It may have been. And yet we cannot deny that Alexandria was also a
metaphysical phenomenon, vast and deep enough; seeing that it held for
some eighteen hundred years a population of several hundred thousand
souls; each of whom, at least according to the Alexandrian philosophy,
stood in a very intimate relation to those metaphysic things which are
imperishable and immovable and eternal, and indeed, contained them more
or less, each man, woman, and child of them in themselves; having wills,
reasons, consciences, affections, relations to each other; being
parents, children, helpmates, bound together by laws concerning right
and wrong, 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, made up of men and of the
spirits, thoughts, affections of men. It, like them, was surely
spiritual; and could be only living and healthy, in as far as it was in
harmony with certain spiritual, unseen, and everlasting 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.
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