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Alexandria and Her Schools; four lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh by Charles Kingsley
page 13 of 115 (11%)
three hundred years in discovering the fact, and in proving it
satisfactorily to all mankind for ever. You must pardon me if I seem
obscure; I cannot help looking at the question with a somewhat
Alexandrian eye, and talking of the poor negro dock-worker as certain
Alexandrian philosophers would have talked, of whom I shall have to
speak hereafter.

I should have been glad, therefore, had time permitted me, instead of
confining myself strictly to what are now called "the physic and
metaphysic schools" of Alexandria, to have tried as well as I could to
make you understand how the whole vast phenomenon grew up, and supported
a peculiar life of its own, for fifteen hundred years and more, and was
felt to be the third, perhaps the second city of the known world, and
one so important to the great world-tyrant, the Caesar of Rome, that no
Roman of distinction was ever sent there as prefect, but the Alexandrian
national vanity and pride of race was allowed to the last to pet itself
by having its tyrant chosen from its own people.

But, though this cannot be, we may find human elements enough in the
schools of Alexandria, strictly so called, to interest us for a few
evenings; for these schools were schools of men; what was discovered and
taught was discovered and taught by men, and not by thinking-machines;
and whether they would have been inclined to confess it or not, their
own personal characters, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, strength
and weakness, beliefs and disbeliefs, determined their metaphysics and
their physics for them, quite enough to enable us to feel for them as
men of like passions with ourselves; and for that reason only, men whose
thoughts and speculations are worthy of a moment's attention from us.
For what is really interesting to man, save men, and God, the Father of
men?
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