Barbarians. This is the name that the Greeks gave with contempt to all nations who did not speak their language, or at least did not speak it as well as they did. They did not even make an exception of the Egyptians, to whom, they confessed, all of their philosophers and legislators traveled for instruction. Without entering into Bruckner’s discussion of the different etymologies of this term, or examining if it is composed from the Arabic bar (which signifies desert), or if it is derived from the term the Chaldeans used to express foris, or the Latin extra , I will only note that amidst this series of terms the Greeks merely used barbare to distinguish the extreme opposition extant between them and other nations who were not yet dispossessed of the crudity of earlier centuries, since they themselves, more modern than the majority of them, had perfected their taste and contributed much to the progress of the human mind. Thus, all nations were reputed to be barbarians , because they had neither the politesse of the Greeks, nor a language as pure, as fertile, and as harmonious. In this matter they were imitated by the Romans, who also called all other peoples barbarians, with the exception of the Greeks, whom they recognized as a learned and civilized [ policée ] nation. This is quite similar to some of our Frenchmen, who regard everything that is distant from our own practices as uncouth. Just as we now do in our own fashion, the Greeks and Romans more jealously conquered with the mind than with the force of arms.

When the Christian religion appeared, they paid it no more heed than they had the philosophies of other nations. They treated it as itself barbarian , and they dared to disregard it. This is what encouraged the first Christians to oppose the Greeks and the Romans—the defense of the barbarian philosophy. They used a clever and roundabout way, accustoming them to respect the Christian religion little by little. Under this crude cover, they divested them of their beauty, and caused them to surrender their sciences and their self-pride. Tatian of Syria, the disciple of Saint Justin, convinced them that they had invented nothing themselves, and were indebted to the very men they had treated as barbarians for all the knowledge that made them so proud.

“What is,” he reproached them malignantly, “the science among you that does not draw its origin from some stranger? You do not ignore the fact that the art of explaining dreams comes from Italy; that the Carians were the first to foretell the future from the different positions of the stars; that for this purpose the Phrygians and the Isaurians used the flights of birds, and the Cypriots the still smoking entrails of animals whose throats had been slit. You do not ignore that the Chaldeans invented astronomy, the Persians magic, the Egyptians geometry, and the Phoenicians the art of letters. Cease, then, oh Greeks, offering as your own particular discoveries those things which you have only followed and imitated.”

These reproaches notwithstanding, it is certain that the Greeks were the first inventors of that systematic philosophy, which, in challenging all authority, only allowed itself to drive towards clarity’s gleam in the search for truth. As we have also noted in the article, the soul, the philosophy of other peoples—and even of the Egyptians—was but a heap of maxims transmitted by traditions that held the same sway over their minds as the oracles of their gods. It was only in Greece that one could reason; only there in that country did the subtle and refined mind give birth to systems. Properly speaking, the philosophy of other peoples was just a mysterious theology. Thus, one can say that the Greeks were the first philosophers in the sense that rigorous usage attaches to this term.