alexandria and her schools(亚历山大和她的学校)

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ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

ALEXANDRIA AND

HER SCHOOLS

By Charles Kingsley

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

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 presumed to print them of my own accord, knowing how

fragmentary and crude they are. They were printed at the special request

of my audience. Least of all, perhaps, ought I to have presumed to

publish them, as I have done, at Cambridge, where any inaccuracy or

sciolism (and that such defects exist in these pages, I cannot but fear)

would be instantly detected, and severely censured: but nevertheless, it

seemed to me that Cambridge was the fittest place in which they could see

the light, because to Cambridge I mainly owe what little right method or

sound thought may be found in them, or indeed, in anything which I have

ever written. In the heyday of youthful greediness and ambition, when

the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the universe, must needs

know everything, or rather know about everything, at once and on the spot,

too many are apt, as I have been in past years, to complain of Cambridge

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 with

which he meets, he begins to find that his University, in as far as he has

really received her teaching into himself, has given him, in her criticism,

her mathematics, above all, in Plato, something which all the popular

knowledge, the lectures and institutions of the day, and even good books

themselves, cannot give, a boon more precious than learning; namely, the

art of learning. That instead of casting into his lazy lap treasures which

he would not have known how to use, she has taught him to mine for them

himself; and has by her wise refusal to gratify his intellectual greediness,

excited his hunger, only that he may be the stronger to hunt and till for his

own subsistence; and thus, the deeper he drinks, in after years, at fountains

wisely forbidden to him while he was a Cambridge student, and sees his

old companions growing up into sound-headed and sound-hearted

practical men, liberal and expansive, and yet with a firm standing- ground

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

for thought and action, he learns to complain less and less of Cambridge

studies, and more and more of that conceit and haste of his own, which

kept him from reaping the full advantage of her training.

These Lectures, as I have said, are altogether crude and fragmentary--

how, indeed, could they be otherwise, dealing 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 themselves; and, I trust, as giving some glimpses

of a central idea, in the light of which the spiritual history of Alexandria,

and perhaps of other countries also, may be seen to have in itself a

coherence and organic 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 me, if I wished to give any interpretation at all of

Alexandrian thought, any Theodicy at all of her fate, to refer to laws which

I cannot but believe to be deeper, wider, more truly eternal than the points

which cause most of our modern controversies, either theological or

political; laws which will, I cannot but believe also, reassert themselves,

and have to be reasserted by all wise teachers, very soon indeed, and it

may be under most novel embodiments, but without any change in their

eternal spirit.

For I may say, I hope, now (what if said ten years ago would have only

excited laughter), that I cannot but subscribe to the opinion of the many

wise men who believe that Europe, and England as an integral 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 mankind in general, it

depends upon the wisdom and courage of each nation individually,

whether that great deluge shall issue, as the Reformation did, in a fresh

outgrowth 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 sympathy with those who

prate so loudly of the progress of the species, and the advent of I know-

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

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 may well believe that prophecy will be fulfilled in this great crisis, as

it is in every great crisis, although one be unable to conceive by what

method of symbolism the drying up 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 every man's work, without being of opinion that after a few more years

are over, the great majority of the human race will be consigned

hopelessly to never-ending torments.

If prophecy be indeed a divine message to man; if it be anything but a

cabbala, useless either to the simple-minded or to the logical, intended

only for the plaything of a few devout fancies, it must declare the

unchangeable laws by which the unchangeable God is governing, and has

always governed, the human race; and therefore only by understanding

what has happened, can we understand what will happen; only by

understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely

by picking out--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few names and dates

from the records of all the ages, but by trying to discover its organic laws,

and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and systems, health and

disease, growth, change, decay and death. If, in one small corner of this

vast field, I shall have thrown a single 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

common among us, and but too likely to hinder us from doing our duty

manfully against our real foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

abroad.

These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to

say a few words. 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 from saying here something more on

this matter; and that, first, because all political questions have their real

root in moral and spiritual ones, and not (as too many fancy) in questions

merely relating to the balance of power or commercial economy, and are

(the world being under the guidance 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 to myself, to guard against any mistake

about my meaning or supposition that I consider the Turkish empire a

righteous thing, or one likely to stand much longer on the face of God's

earth.

The Turkish empire, as it now exists, seems to me an altogether

unrighteous and worthless thing. It stands no longer upon the assertion

of the great truth of Islam, but on the merest brute force and oppression.

It has long 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 Rome had for its tutelage of the

Syrians and Egyptians; namely, the governing with tolerable justice those

who cannot govern themselves, and making them better and more

prosperous people, by compelling them to submit to law. I do not know

when this excuse is a sufficient one. God showed that it was so for

several centuries in the case of the Romans; God will show whether 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 become a desert and a ruin

under the upas-blight of their government.

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

As for the regeneration of Turkey, it is a question whether the

regeneration of any nation which has sunk, not into mere valiant savagery,

but into effete and profligate luxury, is possible. Still more is it a

question whether a regeneration can be effected, not by the rise of a new

spiritual idea (as in the case of the Koreish), but simply by more perfect

material appliances, and commercial prudence. History gives no instance,

it seems to me, of either case; and if our attempt to regenerate 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 armies require now to be officered by

foreign adventurers, in order to make them capable of even keeping

together, 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 armies had fallen into the same state; when the Italian legions

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 must not fall by our

treachery. Its sins will surely be avenged upon it: but wrong must not

avenge wrong, or the penalty is only passed on from one sinner to another.

Whatsoever element of good is left in the Turk, to that we must appeal as

our only means, if not of saving him, still of helping 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 him good, or take a safe standing-ground 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 make the civil and

religious freedom of the Eastern Christians the price of our assistance to

the Mussulman, the struggle will not be over; for Russia will still be what

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

she has always been, and the northern Anarch will be checked, only to

return to the contest with fiercer lust of aggrandisement, to enact the part

of a new Macedon, against a new Greece, divided, not united, by the

treacherous bond of that balance of power, which is but war under the

guise of peace. Europe needs a holier and more spiritual, and therefore a

stronger union, than can be given 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 from a rising world-tyranny, which promised to be even

more hideous than the elder one of Rome. If, as then, England 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 impossible

to look without sad forebodings upon the destiny of a war, begun upon the

express understanding that evil shall be left triumphant throughout Europe,

wheresoever that evil does not seem, to our own selfish short-sightedness,

to threaten us with immediate danger; with promises, that under the

hollow name of the Cause of Order--and that promise made by a

revolutionary Anarch--the wrongs of Italy, Hungary, 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 him, and keeping down the victims of

his cruelty, under pretence of keeping 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 judgments against us--which would be abject, were they not expressed

in such second-hand stock-phrases as to make one altogether doubt their

sincerity, but chivalrously, and with awful joy, as a noble calling, an

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

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 some other duty, and calling

it "Order." Elizabeth did so at first. She tried to keep the peace with

Spain; she shrank from injuring the cause of Order (then a nobler one than

now, because it was the cause of Loyalty, and not merely of Mammon) by

assisting the 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 was with her; and so that seemingly most fearful of all

England's perils, when the real meaning of it was seen, and God's will in it

obeyed manfully, became the foundation of England's naval and colonial

empire, and laid the foundation of all her future glories. 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 who willingly throws away 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 may grant us, the children of the Elizabethan

heroes, all wisdom to see our duty, and courage to do it, even to the death,

should be our earliest prayer. Our statesmen have done wisely and well

in refusing, in spite of hot-headed clamours, to appeal to the sword as long

as there was any chance of a peaceful settlement even of a single evil.

They are doing wisely and well now in declining to throw away the

scabbard as long as there is hope that a determined front will awe the

offender into submission: but the day may come when the scabbard must

be thrown away; and God grant that they may have the courage to do it.

It is reported that our rulers have said, that English diplomacy can no

longer recognise "nationalities," but only existing "governments." God

grant 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 may reassert that most English

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

of all truths again, 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 them) whether shot or shell has the power of taking 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 a man fear him, the destroying devil, 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 clergy may remember this during the coming war, and

instead of weakening the righteous courage and honour of our countrymen

by instilling 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 them that "He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for

all live unto Him;" and that he who renders up his animal life as a

worthless thing, in the cause of duty, commits his real and human life, his

very soul and self, into the hands of a just and merciful Father, who has

promised to leave no good deed unrewarded, and least of all that most

noble deed, the dying like a man for the sake not merely of this land of

England, but of the freedom and national life of half the world.

ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS

LECTURE I--THE PTOLEMAIC

ERA

Before I begin to lecture upon the Physical and Metaphysical schools

of Alexandria, it may be better, perhaps, to define the meaning of these

two epithets. Physical, we shall all agree, means that which belongs 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, named his treatise so only on account of its following in

philosophic sequence his book on Physics.

But, according to these definitions, the whole history of Alexandria

might 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 atoms of them formed

food for new creations, entered into new organisations, just as the atoms of

a dead plant or animal might do. 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

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ALEXANDRIAANDHERSCHOOLS1ALEXANDRIAANDHERSCHOOLSByCharlesKingsleyALEXANDRIAANDHERSCHOOLS2PREFACEIshouldnothavepresumedtochooseforanylecturesofminesuchasubjectasthatwhichIhavetriedtotreatinthisbook.ThesubjectwaschosenbytheInstitutionwherethelecturesweredelivered.StilllessshouldIhavepresumedtoprintthem...

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