of its neighbours; an attempt in
which it may be apparently successful, for a certain period at least,
but which must always have a tragic end. It is impossible to be
conservative and progressive at the same time, to be both national and
cosmopolitan. The attempts to reconcile religious formalism and free
reasoning have never succeeded in the history of human thought. It soon
led to the conviction that one factor must be sacrificed, and, as soon
as this was perceived, the party of zealots was quickly at hand to
preach reaction. In the times of the successors of Alexander, the
Diadochae and Epigones, the Seleucidae and the Lagidae, who had divided the
vast dominion among them, Greek influence had spread all over Palestine.
Greek towns were founded, theatres and gymnasia established; Greek
art was admired and her philosophy studied. The Hellenic movement was
paramount, and the aristocratic families did their best to further it.
Even the high priests, like Jason and Menelaos, who were supposed to be
the guardians of the national exclusive movement, favoured Greek culture
and institutions.

In the mother country, however, the germ of reaction was always very
strong. A constant opposition was directed against the influx of
foreign modes of life and thought, which effaced and obliterated the
intellectual movement. It was different, however, in the other countries
of Macedonian dominion, and especially in Egypt. Alexander the Great,
who seems to have been favourably inclined towards the Jews, settled a
number of them in Alexandria. His policy was kept up by the descendants
of Lagos, that great general of Alexander, who made himself king of the
province which was entrusted to the care of his administration. Egypt
became the resort of many refugees from Judaea, who gradually came under
the influence of the dazzling Greek thought and culture, so new and
therefore so attractive to the Semitic mind. Hellenism and Hebraism had
known each other for some time, for Phoenician merchants and seafarers
had carried the seed of Oriental wisdom to the distant west. The
acquaintance, however, was a slight one. At the court of the Ptolemies,
on the threshold of Europe and Asia, they met at last. On the shores
of the Mediterranean, on the soil where lay the traces of the ancient
Egyptian civilisation, in the silent avenues of mysterious sphinxes,
amongst hieroglyphic-covered obelisks, Greek and Hebrew thought stood
face to face. The two civilis