ALEXANDRIA AND HER SCHOOLS {1}
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 standingground 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-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 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 ...
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