Hermes, and made out to be the father of Egyptian wisdom.  But, if the close acquaintanceship of Hebraism and Hellenism began with a mere flirtation, encouraged by the rulers of the land and kept up by the Jews, who wished to gain the favour of the conquering race and to show themselves and their history in as favourable a light as possible, it soon ended in a serious attachment.  The Hebrews made themselves acquainted with Hellenic life and thought.  They studied Homer and Hesiod, Empedocles and Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle, and they were startled by the discovery that in Greek thought there were many elements, moral and religious, familiar to them:  this enhanced the attraction.  The narrowness and exclusiveness to which strict nationality always gives rise, engendering contempt and hatred for everything foreign—­which made even the Greeks, with all their intellectual culture, draw a line of demarcation between Greek and barbarian—­gave way to a spirit of cosmopolitan breadth of view which has only very rarely been equalled in history.  Hellenic and Hebrew forms of thought were brought into friendly union, and gave birth to ideas and aspirations of which humanity may always be proud.  Greek aesthetic judgment and Semitic mysticism, different phases of thought in themselves, were welded into one.  The religious conceptions of Moses and the Prophets were expressed in the language of the philosophical schools; an attempt was made to bring into harmony the dogmas of supernatural revelation and the fruits of human speculative thought.  Such an attempt is a great undertaking, for, if sincerely and relentlessly pursued, it must end in breaking down the barriers of separation, in the establishment of a common truth, and in the sacrifice of cherished ideals and convictions which prove to be wrong.  If carried to its logical conclusion, such a cosmopolitan broad-mindedness, such a cross-fertilisation of intellectual products, must give rise to the ennobling idea that there is only one truth, and that the external forms are only fleeting waves upon the vast ocean of human ideals.  The attempt was made in Alexandria by the Judaeo-Hellenic philosophers.  Unfortunately, however, the Hebrews, with all their adaptability, have not yet carried this attempt to its logical conclusion.  The spirit of reaction has ever and anon been ready to crush in its infancy the endeavour of truth and sincerity, of broad-mindedness and tolerance.  When placed before the question to be or not to be, to be logical or illogical, it has chosen the latter, and striven after the impossible:  the reconciliation of what cannot be reconciled without alterations, rejections, and selections.  The happy marriage of Hellenism and Hebraism in Egypt had a tragic end.  The union was dissolved, not, however, without having produced its issue:  the Alexandrian culture, which was carried to Rome by Philo Judaeus, and thus influenced later European thought and humanity at large.

[Illustration:  015.jpg page image—­Alexandria]