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 become a
part of nature, and took its place among the things which are born to
die, only by breaking the law which 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?
Be that as it may, there must have been metaphysic enough to be learnt
in that, or any city of three hundred thousand inhabitants, even though
it had never contained lecture-room or philosopher's chair, and had
never heard the names of Aristotle and Plato. Metaphysic enough,
indeed, to be learnt there, could we but enter into the heart of even
the most brutish negro slave who ever was brought down the Nile out of
the desert by Nubian merchants, to build piers and docks in whose
commerce he did not share, temples whose worship he did not comprehend,
libraries and theatres whose learning and civilisation were to him as
much a sealed book as they were to his countryman, and fellow-slave, and
only friend, the ape. There was metaphysic enough in him truly, and
things eternal and immutable, though his dark-skinned descendants were
three hundred years in discovering the fact, and in proving it
satisfactorily to all mankind for ever.
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