KINGSLEY'S EDINBURGH LECTURES: ALEXANDRIA AND
HER SCHOOLS.* ' Sum a title as "Alexandria and her Schools" on the back of a small volume of 170 pages indicates the absence of any attempt at exhaustive treatment! Mr. Kingsley says of his lectures, that they are "altogether crude and fragmentary," and adds, that "they are meant neither as essays nor as orations, but simply as a collection of hints to those who may wish to work out the sub- ject for themselves; and, I trust, as giving some glimpses of a central idea, in the light of which the spiritual history of Alex- andria, and perhaps of other countries also, may be seen to have in itself a coherence and organic method." - (Preface, P. 9.) In his first lecture, he thus summarily disposes of the result of Alex- andrian cultivation—" In physics they did little; in art nothing; in metaphysics less than nothing." (P. 19.) We presume, there- fore, that as he does not take a canvass large enough for such de- tail as is required to make literary history interesting or profita- ble, and as he estimates at so low a value the broad results of the thought and labour of Alexandrian sevens, philosophers, and poets, he must consider his own countrymen at this day to stand in need of the practical warning which the story of the moral and intel- lectual development of Alexandria stamps upon such tendencies as her thinkers exhibited. And this is, in fact, the character of the four discourses. They are predominantly exhortations and warnings addressed to Englishmen of today, enforced and illus- trated by the literary and philosophical history of a remote East- ern capital.
In one brief phrase, the central weakness of Alexandrian thought was its tendency to spin systems, instead of seeking truth in nature and in human life. In physics this tendency was not more manifest in Alexandria than in the rest of the ancient world; and the names of Euclid, Hipparchus, Eratosthenes, and Ptolemy, are enough to confer immortal honour on the city. But in poetry and in metaphysics this fatal turning from the perennial sources of truth and strength struck Alexandrian cul- tivation with sterility in its very birth, degrading poetry into pedantic artifice, and philosophy into elaborate and empty day- dreams. Mr. Kingsley exhibits the multiform manifestations of this tendency in a series of brief but brilliant biographical and literary sketches, interspersed with comments of the closest mo- dern or rather universal application : and, slight as the book is if considered as an attempt to add to our knowledge of the facts of the subject it treats, it will, from the earnestness, feeling, and imagination of the writer, do far more towards giving the general public a living conception of those facts than any mere manual or resume of systems. How charmingly Mr. Kingsley writes, we have not now to learn for the first time, but we could scarcely find in modern English anything more graceful and at the same time more true than this on the poetry of Theocritus.
"One can well conceive the delight which his idyls must have given to those dusty Alexandrians, pent up for ever between sea and sand-hills, drinking the tank-water, and never hearing the sound of a running stream, whirling, too, for ever in all the bustle and intrigue of a great commercial and literary city. Refreshing indeed it must have been to them to hear of those simple joys and simple sorrows of the Sicilian shepherd, in a land where toil was but exercise and mere existence was enjoyment. To them, and to us also. I believe The:oentus is one of the poets who will never die. He sees men and things, in his own light way, truly ; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless touches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that gorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian's pictures, with still sunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the sunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping from the orchard-bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the cistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under the dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some " • Grot-nymph haunted,
Garlanded over with vine, and acanthus, and clambering roses, Cool in the fierce still noon, where the streams glance clear in the moss-beds':
and here and there, beyond the braes and meads, blue glimpses of the far-off summer sea ; and all this told in a language and a metre which shapes it
- • Alexandria and her Schools. Four Lectures delivered at the Philosophical In- stitution, Edinburgh. With a Preface. By the Reverend Charles Kingsley, Canon of Middleham, and Rector of Eversley. Published by Macmillan and Co., Cam.. bridge. self almost unconsciously, wave after wave, into the most luscious song. Doubt not that many a soul then was the simpler, and purer, and better, for reading the sweet singer of Syracuse. He Las his immoralities, but they are the immoralities of his age; his naturalness, his sunny calm and cheerfulness, are all his own."
Equally fine as writing, and interesting as summing up Mr. Kingsley's estimate of the Neoplatonic Philosophy, is his comment on the famous prayer, " to all the Gods and Goddesses," with which Proclus preludes his discourses on the Parmenides.
"Surely this is an interesting document. The last Pagan Greek prayer, I believe, which we have on record ; the death-wail of the old world—not without a touch of melody. One caniaot altogether admire the style • it is inflated, pedantic, written, I fear, with a considerable consciousness that he was saying the right thing and in the very finest way : but still it is a prayer. .A. cry for light ; by no means, certainly, like that noble one in Ten- nsson's _Memoriam- " 'so runs my dream. But what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a
Yet he asks for light : ,perhaps he had settled already for himself—like too many more of us—what sort of light he chose to have ; but still the eye is turned upward to the sun, not inward in conceited fancy that self is its own illumination. He asks: surely not in vain. There was light to be had for asking. That prayer certainly was not answered in the letter ; it may have been are now in the spirit. And yet it' is a- sad prayer enough. Poor old
man, and poor old philosophy. . "This he and his teachers had gained by despising the simpler and yet far profounder doctrine of the Christian schools, that the Logos, the Divine Teacher in whom both Christians and Heathens believed, was the very archetype ,of lam; ap.d that he had proved that fact by being made flesh, and threlling bodilY amonktfiem,sthat they might behold His glory, full of grace and truth, and see that it was at once the perfection of man and the per- fection of God ; that that whioh was most divine was most human, and that which was most human most divine. That was the outcome of their meta- physic, that they had found the Absolute One ; because One existed in whom the apparent antagonism between that which is eternally and that which be- comes in time, .between the ideal and the actual, between the spiritual and the material, in a word, between God and man, was explained and recon- ciled for ever.. • . "And rc?plus's prayer, on the other hand, was the outcome of the Neo- platonists' metaphysic, the end of all their search after the One, the Indi- visible, the Absolute, this cry to all manner of innumerable phantoms, ghosts of ideaff, ghosts of traditions, neither things nor persons, but thoughts, to give the philosopher each something or other, according to the nature of each, Not that he very clearly defines what each is to give him ; but still he feels himself in want pf 41n:tanner of things and it is as well to have as many friends at couittis possible, Noetic gods, Noeric gods, rulerp, angels, &mons, heroes—to enable to do what ?—To 'understand I'lato's most mystical and far-seeing 'sjoneulations. The Eternal-Nous, the Intellectual Teachers has vanished farther and further off; further off still some dim • Viiii0L1 of a supreme Goodness. Infinite spaces above-that looms through the mist of the abyss a Primeval One. , But even thet has a predicate, for it is one ; it is not pure essence. Must there not be something beyond that again, which is not-even one, but is nameless, inconceivable, absolute ? Whit an abyss! -How shall the human mind find anything whereon to rest, in the vast =Where between Wand the object of its search ? The search after, the One issues in a wail. ..to the innumerable s add kind gods, angels and heroes, not human indeed, but still conceivable enough _to satisfy at least the,linagination, step in to gll the void, as they have done since, and may do again; and so, as Mr. Carly le has it, the bottomless pit got roofed over,' atsitsiiiity bemgain erelong."
That ,last touch shows how Mr. Kingsley's mind is harping—and not, we are boand to admit, without reasonable ground—on his old notion of the danger modern " Spiritualism " incurs of falling into thehasest Fetishism. It is, we believe this fear that prompted the choice of his subject and directed its treatment ;' and it is the' thoroughly practical aim of exhibiting the downward tendency of a speculation which seeks its god, its truth, its universe, in dreams, that distinguishes his book from those brilliant resumes of philo- sophic epochs for which French 'writers are famous: This same pmetical purpose justifies the frequent allusion to passing events. Even the war on the Danube comes in naturally as the event more than any other testing the real manhood and morality Of our times, and as connected with the destinies of the Mahometen conquerors of Alexandria ; of whose rule and character probably Mr. Kingsley will by this time entertain somewhat higher opinions than in the early part of the year. Which side he espouses in the quarrel, can be doubtful to no one who knows him or his writings. How far he is disposed to go in a great cause, and how little a profound spirit of Christianity implies peace at any price or an undue horror at bloodshed in battle, may be seen in the concluding passage of his Preface ; which we commend to the thoughtful consideration of those who think the New Testament may be bound up with the Share List, but would shrivel away in horror from contact with the Articles of War.
"It is reported that our rulers have said that English diplomacy can no longer recognize 'nationalities,' but only existing 'governments.' God grant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as a sj,firitual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the eentral idea of English policy • the idea by faith in which she delivered first herself, and then the Protestant nations of the Continent successively, from the yokes of Rome of Spain, of France ; and that they may. reassert that most English of all &lithe again, let the apparent cost be what it may. "It is true that this end will not be attained without what is called now- a-days a destruction of human life.' But ice 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 inay remember this during the coming war, and instead of weakening the risehteous courage and honour of our countrymen by instilling into them selfish and superstitious fears, and a theory of the future state which repre- sents 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 ; foralllive unto and that he who renders up his animal life as a worthless thing; in.' cause of duty, commits his real and human life, his very soul and self, irIM the hands of a just and merciful Fathers who has promised to leave 'no goodl 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...A4! national life of half the world."
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