existed at all in Alexandria, in that same modern acceptation. Ritter,
I think, it is who complains naively enough, that the Alexandrian
Neoplatonists had a bad habit, which grew on them more and more as the
years rolled on, of mixing up philosophy with theology, and so defiling,
or at all events colouring, its pure transparency. There is no denying
the imputation, as I shall show at greater length in my next Lecture.
But one would have thought, looking back through history, that the
Alexandrians were not the only philosophers guilty of this shameful act
of syncretism. Plato, one would have thought, was as great a sinner as
they. So were the Hindoos. In spite of all their logical and
metaphysical acuteness, they were, you will find, unable to get rid of
the notion that theological inquiries concerning Brahma, Atma, Creeshna,
were indissolubly mixed up with that same logic and metaphysic. The
Parsees could not separate questions about Ahriman and Ormuzd from
Kant's three great philosophic problems: What is Man?--What may be
known?--What should be done? Neither, indeed, could the earlier Greek
sages. Not one of them, of any school whatsoever--from the semi-mythic
Seven Sages to Plato and Aristotle--but finds it necessary to consider
not in passing, but as the great object of research, questions
concerning the gods:- whether they are real or not; one or many;
personal or impersonal; cosmic, and parts of the universe, or organisers
and rulers of it; in relation to man, or without relation to him. Even
in those who flatly deny the existence of the gods, even in Lucretius
himself, these questions have to be considered, before the question,
What is man? can get any solution at all. On the answer given to them
is found to depend intimately the answer to the question, What is the
immaterial part of man? Is it a part of nature, or of something above
nature? Has he an immaterial part at all?--in one word, Is a human
metaphysic possible at all? So it was with the Greek philosophers of
old, even, as Asclepius and Ammonius say, with Aristotle himself. "The