Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

436 THE CHRISTIAN CHUECH ANDThe two are indifferent to each other ; philosophypursues its way without troubling itself about re-ligion, without fearing any interruption from it.In the seventy-seven years which elapsed fromthe death of Socrates, B.C. 399, to that of Aristotle,B.C. 322, Greek life had suffered a great change.That dear-loved independence which every statehad cultivated, and which concentrated everyenergy of the mind in civil life, had vanished.During the forty years of Plato's work as ateacher it was becoming less and less : Cha3roneagave it the death-blow ; while Aristotle is the sonof a time at which scientific study had alreadybegun to take the place of active political life.12But the conquest effected by his great pupil Alexandercompleted this change. He opened theEast to the Greek mind, / bringing o o it into close contactwith Asiatic thought, beliefs, and customs.Under his successors Alexandria, « Antioch, ~A_-L-JLA. U-A_\_y \J-*-*-«andSeleucia,Tarsus,Peramus,and Rhodes becamegreat centres of.Greek culture: but Greek self-government was gone. Athens with the rest ofthe Greek cities had lost its political independence,but it remained the metropolis of Greek philo-sor>hv../From the last decade of the fourth cen-tury before Christ four great schools, the Platonic,Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean, all seated here,as embodied in the dwelling-place and oral teachingof their masters, stand over against each other.O / O12 Zeller, yol. iii. part 1, p. 7.