It may be said, certainly, as an excuse for these Alexandrian Greeks,
that they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they
only exhibited the common and natural faults of old age. For as with
individuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought--
youth is the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong
induction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,
and content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of
their earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and
anathematising all conclusions which have been arrived at since their
own meridian. It is sad: but it is patent and common. It is sad to
think that the day may come to each of us, when we shall have ceased to
hope for discovery and for progress; when a thing will seem e priori
false to us, simply because it is new; and we shall be saying
querulously to the Divine Light which lightens every man who comes into
the world: "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further. Thou hast taught
men enough; yea rather, thou hast exhausted thine own infinitude, and
hast no more to teach them." Surely such a temper is to be fought
against, prayed against, both in ourselves, and in the generation in
which we live.
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