Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/30

 neo-platonism", the offspring of the coition of East and West in Alexandria, where all religions and all philosophies met together. The world and the flesh were crucified that by the spirit, man might enter into God'. Pure in its ethical mood, neo- platonism, says Harnack, led surely to intellectual baukruptcy; the irruption of the barbarians was not altogether the cause of the eclipse of natural knowledge: to transcendental intuition the wisdom of the world had become foolishness. Yet even then, as again and again, came the genius of Aris- totle to save the human mind. The death of Hypatia was the death of the School of Alexandria, but in Athens neo-platonism survived and grew. Proclus, ascetic as he was, was versed also in Aristotle; and he compelled the Eastern mysteries into categories: so that on the closure of the School of Athens by Justinian (A.D. 529) a formal philosophy was bequeathed to the Faith; the first scholastic period was fashioned, and the

1 It must not be supposed that the idealism of Plato and the mysticism of the East were alike, or even akin. Plato was a Greek; his mind, as we appreciate such qualities, was sane and lucid: he had no yearning whatever for absorption in the Infinite; but rather, like Aristotle, for a noble life. "Oftener on her knees than on her feet Died every day she lived." Macbeth Iv. 3.