I do not say
that theology and metaphysic are separate studies. That is to be
ascertained only by seeing some one separate them. And when I see them
separated, I shall believe them separable. Only the separation must not
be produced by the simple expedient of denying the existence of either
one of them, or at least of ignoring the existence of one steadily
during the study of the other. If they can be parted without injury to
each other, let them be parted; and till then let us suspend hard
judgments on the Alexandrian school of metaphysic, and also on the
schools of that curious people the Jews, who had at this period a
steadily increasing influence on the thought, as well as on the
commercial prosperity, of Alexandria.
You must not suppose, in the meanwhile, that the philosophers whom the
Ptolemies collected (as they would have any other marketable article) by
liberal offers of pay and patronage, were such men as the old Seven
Sages of Greece, or as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In these three
last indeed, Greek thought reached not merely its greatest height, but
the edge of a precipice, down which it rolled headlong after their
decease. The intellectual defects of the Greek mind, of which I have
already spoken, were doubtless one great cause of this decay: but, to
my mind, moral causes had still more to do with it.
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