The Alexandrian Movement. The scientific movement in Alexandria,
of which mention has already been made, was but a phase of the general
intellectual revival which was centered in the capital of Egypt during
the last centuries of the old era and the first century of the new.
This revival may be said to date from the foundation of the city (332
B.C.) by Alexander the Great, who, owing probably to the influence of
Aristotle, always held philosophy in the highest esteem and took a
lively interest in the spread of philosophical knowledge. After the
division of the Macedonian empire, consequent on the death of
Alexander, the Seleucidae in Syria, the Attali in Pergamus, and the
Ptolemies in Egypt continued to protect and encourage philosophy. The
Ptolemies were especially zealous in the cause of learning, and under
their rule Alexandria soon became the Athens of the East, -- the center
of the intellectual as well as of the commercial life of the Orient, --
and the point where the Eastern and the Western civilizations met. The
famous museum, founded about the beginning of the third century before
Christ by Ptolemy Soter, was literally a home of learning, and the no
less famous library contained all that was best in Grecian, Roman,
Jewish, Persian, Babylonian, Phoenician, and Hindu literature. The
protection and encouragement extended to learning by the Ptolemies were
continued by the Roman emperors after Egypt became a Roman province.
From this intellectual movement there arose a new phase of
philosophical thought, which may be broadly characterized as an
attempt to unite in one speculative system the philosophy of Greece
and the religious doctrines of the Orient, -- an attempt which was
rendered particularly opportune by a variety of circumstances. The Jews
had settled in large numbers in Alexandria, and there was constant
communication between Alexandria and Palestine, which was at that time
dependent on Egypt. The translation known as the Septuagint had
brought the sacred books of the Hebrews within the reach of Greek
scholars; and Greek philosophy was not unprepared for the task of
adjusting itself to the new ideas thus presented to the Greek mind.
Indeed, Greek philosophy had reached the point where, its own resources
having been exhausted, it welcomed the inflow of new ideas from the
East, which had ever been to the Greek imagination the home of the
mysterious and the spiritual. Besides, the conviction was gaining
ground that Greek philosophy and Oriental religion had a common origin;
what, therefore, could seem more natural than that the two should be
reunited? Finally, the movement had a practical as well as a
theoretical aim: it was hoped that the diffusion of new religious ideas
would bring about a reform of the popular religion. At the end of a
generation of scepticism such a reform was sadly needed.
In the movement thus broadly characterized as an effort to reform the
intellectual and moral life of the time by a synthesis of Greek
philosophy and Oriental religion, the religious element was naturally
the dominant element, and the philosophy which resulted was more
properly a theosophy than a system of philosophy strictly so called. In
the stream of theosophical thought we may distinguish two currents: (1)
Greco-Jewish philosophy; (2) Neo-Pythagoreanism and
Neo-Platonism. In Greco-Jewish speculation Greek philosophy
turned to the religious tradition of the East; in the Neo-Pythagorean
and Neo-Platonic systems it turned rather towards a mystic
enlightenment, a revelation of the Deity to the individual soul.
