aven--forgotten through the guilt and fall of man.
There is something very melancholy in this total cessation of inquiry.
The mental impetus, which one would have expected to continue for a
season by reason of the momentum that had been gathered in so many
ages, seems to have been all at once abruptly lost. So complete a pause
is surprising: the arrow still flies on after it has parted from the
bow; the potter's wheel runs round though all the vessels are finished.
In producing this sudden stoppage, the policy of the early Caesars
greatly assisted. The principle of liberty of thought, which the very
existence of the divers philosophical schools necessarily implied, was
too liable to make itself manifest in aspirations for political liberty.
While through the emperors the schools of Greece, of Alexandria, and
Rome were depressed from that supremacy to which they might have
aspired, and those of the provinces, as Marseilles and Rhodes, were
relatively exalted, the former, in a silent and private way, were
commencing those rivalries, the forerunners of the great theological
struggles between them in after ages for political power. Christianity
in its dawn was attended by a general belief that in the East there had
been preserved a purer recollection of the ancient revelation, and that
hence from that quarter the light would presently shine forth. Under the
favouring influence of such an expectation, Orientalism, to which, as we
have seen, Grecian thought had spontaneously arrived, was greatly
re-enforced.

[Sidenote: Philo the Jew thinks he is inspired.]

[Sidenote: His mystical philosophy.]

In this final period of Greek philosophy, the first to whom we must turn
is Philo the Jew, who lived in the time of the Emperor Caligula. In
harmony with the ideas of his nation, he derives all philosophy and
useful knowledge from the Mosaic record, not hesitating to wrest
Scripture to his use by various allegorical interpretations, asserting
that man has fallen from his primitive wisdom and purity; that physical
inquiry is of very little avail, but that an innocent life and a burning
faith are what we must trust to. He persuaded himself that a certain
inspiration fell upon him while he was in the act of writing, somewhat
like that of the penmen of the Holy Scriptures. His readers may,
however, be disposed to believe that herein he was self-deceived,
judging both from the character of his composition and the nature of his
doctrine.