Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

28 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMgreat Alexandrine library, representing, as it were,the beginning of literature, owed its first origin tothat zeal for knowledge which the great master communicatedto his royal pupil, and which that pupil'ssuccessors carried out in their famous foundation.He, with Plato, and still more than Plato, is therepresentative through all time of human culture.Like Plato he limited himself to the formation of aschool, and with all his love for books subordinatedthe written to the spoken word. His writings havebeen considered the note-books of his lectures. Aristotlecreated two sciences, logic and ethics, but hemade no society of men. He conceived and describedall polities, but he too shrunk from the attempt tocreate that noblest one which should rest on the preceptsand practices of philosophy.In Zeno we find a considerable modification of themental standing-ground occupied by Plato and Aristotle.No longer aspiring to universal knowledge inand for itself, it was pre-eminently a practical system.to found which he limited his efforts. In him thestudy of logic, ethics, and physics, the whole force ofhis reason was directed to afford an inner support toman amid the troubles of life. Those studies werepursued indeed, but not as a part simply of humanculture, which had its end in itself. They were subordinatedto a moral purpose. Philosophy became theinstructress of humanity, and of a humanity felt tobe sick in almost all its members. Man, as a spark ofthe universal reason which ruled the world, was todirect his life in conformity with that reason, representedin the laws of nature, and to live according tothose laws was the conception of virtue. Philosophythus took up at least in part the standing-ground