Pre-American Philosophy [pp. 757-767]

1885.] PRE-AMERIcAK PIlILOSOPHY. 763
ental mysticism, and, more important yet, that of faith. He was
the first to announce that science, in its most important being,
was the gift of God. The name he imparted to it was Faith, and
the faithful performance of its behests was called Piety. Then
came on the controversy between the Jew and the teachers of
the Neo-Platonic school, which also was domiciled at Alexandria.
These men sought to revive whatever was possible of the ideas
of the founder of the Academy. He had, indeed, seemed almost
to approximate the faith announced by Philo, if not as to reason,
at least as to virtue, which he maintained was not a thing for the
intellect of man to discover, but a gift of the Creator. The Jew
applied this definition to science as well, and so in his hands phi
losophy became theology. Henceforth the combat is between
Reason and Faith. In the fulness of time Christianity was born.
And now the victory, humanly speaking, was the more
speedily certain when we contrast the benignity and the universality of the Christian faith with the exclusiveness and the frequent inhumanity of philosophy, as well as its incertitude and its
contradictions. What had been left of philosophy that was not
sceptical professed to hold in contempt the body of man with its
capacities for pleasure and for pain. Some of the later philosophers had gone to the length of expressing their disgust that
they had bodies that were necessary to be fed, clothed, and
housed. Christianity appeared, and from the mouths of unlettered fishermen doctrine claimed to be infallible came forththat God himself had become incarnate in the womb of an Immaculate Virgin, and had made himself known, and had been
tempted to evil even as mankind, though without yielding; that
he had suffered like mankind in the human body that he bad
assumed, and groaned in anguish from this suffering; that he had
wept tears of blood, and in his human being had died, but that
afterwards he, his body as well as his spirit, had risen from the
tomb, and both had gone to his native heaven. Then these same
fishermen announced that not only is the spirit of man immortal,
but the body also; that the latter is destined to resurrection similar to that of the Incarnate God, and both, under conditions, live
for ever with him in such felicity as the mind of man has never
conceived.
Behold now what dignity wa~ attached to the human body,
which so many of the philosophers had despised. It was even
styled a temple wherein was wont to dwell the Most High. Not
that its evil wants were less to be condemned, but more; yet that
they must be restrained, power to accomplish which endeavor