Pre-American Philosophy [pp. 757-767]

~885.J PRE.AMERIc~Ar PlliLOsOP1?Y. 765
Balbus, of the Stoics, Vellejus, whom the Epicureans loved to
style the most gifted of the Romans, could thus decide:
"Velleius judged that the arguments of Cotta were truest, but
those of Balbus seemed to have the greater probability." The
great orator, like the last of the Greeks, tired of strife and turmoil, of the weight of years, of the sight of the decay of liberty
and patriotism, turned again to the scene of the studies of his
youth,
"The olive-grove of Academe Plato's retirement-where the Attic-bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long,"
and dreamed, but only dreamed, of things than the present
Far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting slins."
The thoughtful Christian mind sees in all these struggles
what both to compassionate and what to admire-the earnestness of purpose searching for the truth with anguishing anxiety,
believing in immortality yet dreading annihilation, yet, during
all these struggles, loyal to friendship, and love, and honor,
and justice, and patriotism. Ah! how good is God to have
bestowed upQn the heathen world such exemplars both to the
heathen and to the Christian who was to come after with the
Word in his hands and an infallible interpreter of all its intentions! No wonder that even Christians styled Plato in particular The Divine. Says the Abbe' Bougaud in Histoire de Sainte
Monique: "11 a laiss6e les P~res de l'Eglise incertains du nom
qu'il fallait lui donner; ceux-ci voyant en lui le genie humain
e'lev6 ~ sa plus haute puissance; ceux-la l'appellant un Moise
palen, un proph~te inspire' de' Dien, un preparateur e'vang~lique
envoye' aux nations assises ~ l'ombre de la mort; tons d'accord ~
saluer ce doux et merveilleux ~tranger du nom de Divin." These
words were becoming to use while referring to the mother of the
great Augustine, whose mind lingered so fondly with the sage of
the Academy, and whose teachings received from that exalted
source carried him at length to the highest.
What if such a man had lived to meet the Baptist clothed in
camel's hair in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven was at hand? Were there not Philo and the rabbis? Were there not the Neo-Platonists? Alas! the former
were deaf to the voice, because they had mistaken the nature of
the royalty in which their King was to come in triumph, while