Read "Alexandria and her Schools" by Charles Kingsley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
WE now approach the period in which Alexandria began to have a philosophy of its own-to be, indeed, the leader of human thought for several centuries.
I shall enter on this branch of my subject with some fear and trembling; not only on account of my own ignorance, but on account of the great difficulty of handling it without trenching on certain controversial subjects which are rightly and wisely forbidden here. For there was not one school of Metaphysic at Alexandria: there were two; which, during the whole period of their existence, were in internecine struggle with each other, and yet mutually borrowing from each other; the Heathen, namely, and the Christian. And you cannot contemplate, still less can you understand, the one without the other.