Council, and in part by the order of events in history. Not
without interest will the reader remark that the subjects offer
themselves to us now as they did to the old philosophers of
Greece. We still deal with the same questions about which they
disputed. What is God? What is the soul? What is the world? How
is it governed? Have we any standard or criterion of truth? And
the thoughtful reader will earnestly ask, "Are our solutions of
these problems any better than theirs?"

The general argument of this book, then, is as follows:

I first direct attention to the origin of modern science as
distinguished from ancient, by depending on observation,
experiment, and mathematical discussion, instead of mere
speculation, and shall show that it was a consequence of the
Macedonian campaigns, which brought Asia and Europe into contact.
A brief sketch of those campaigns, and of the Museum of
Alexandria, illustrates its character.

Then with brevity I recall the well-known origin of Christianity,
and show its advance to the attainment of imperial power, the
transformation it underwent by its incorporation with paganism,
the existing religion of the Roman Empire. A clear conception of
its incompatibility with science caused it to suppress forcibly
the Schools of Alexandria. It was constrained to this by the
political necessities of its position.

The parties to the conflict thus placed, I next relate the story
of their first open struggle; it is the first or Southern
Reformation. The point in dispute had respect to the nature of