the old Hellenic race began to die out physically, and population
throughout Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of
the Achaean league. The facts are well known; and foul enough they are.
When the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful. The eagles
were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed
from the face of God's earth. And at the time of which I now speak, the
signs of approaching death were fearfully apparent. Hapless and
hopeless enough were the clique of men out of whom the first two
Ptolemies hoped to form a school of philosophy; men certainly clever
enough, and amusing withal, who might give the kings of Egypt many a
shrewd lesson in king-craft, and the ways of this world, and the art of
profiting by the folly of fools, and the selfishness of the selfish; or
who might amuse them, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and
repartees, and battles of logic; "how one thing cannot be predicated of
another," or "how the wise man is not only to overcome every misfortune,
but not even to feel it," and other such mighty questions, which in
those days hid that deep unbelief in any truth whatsoever which was
spreading fast over the minds of men. Such word-splitters were Stilpo
and Diodorus, the slayer and the slain. They were of the Megaran
school, and were named Dialectics; and also, with more truth, Eristics,
or quarrellers. Their clique had professed to follow Zeno and Socrates
in declaring the instability of sensible presumptions and conclusions,
in preaching an absolute and eternal Being. But there was this deep
gulf between them and Socrates; that while Socrates professed to be
seeking for the Absolute and Eternal, for that which is, they were
content with affirming that it exists. With him, as with the older
sages, philosophy was a search for truth. With them it was a scheme of
doctrines to be defended. And the dialectic on which they prided
themselves so much, differed from his accordingly. He used it
inductively, to seek out, under the notions and conceptions of the mind,