Alexandria and her Schools | Page 7

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.

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 more or less, each man, woman, and child of them in
themselves; having wills, reasons, consciences, affections, relations to
each other; being parents, children, helpmates, bound together by laws
concerning right and wrong, and numberless other unseen and spiritual
relations.
Surely such a body was not merely natural, any more than any other
nation, society, or scientific school, made up of men and of the spirits,
thoughts, affections of men. It, like them, was surely spiritual; and
could be only living and healthy, in as far as it was in harmony with

certain spiritual, unseen, and everlasting laws of God; perhaps, as
certain Alexandrian philosophers would have held, in as far as it was a
pattern of that ideal constitution and polity after which man was created,
the city of God which is eternal in the Heavens. 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