If Alexandria was the birthplace of that intellectual movement which has been described, this was not only the result of the prevailing spirit of the age, but was due to the influence of ideas; salvation could only be found in the reconciliation of ideas.  The geographical centre of this movement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria.  After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticism and literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-place of philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had become easier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging to distinct social groups met on the banks of the Nile.  Not only goods and products of the soil were exchanged, but also ideas and thoughts.  The mental horizon was widened, comparisons ensued, and new ideas were suggested and formed.  This mixture of ideas necessarily created a complex spirit where two currents of thought, of critical scepticism and superstitious credulity, mixed and mingled.  Another powerful factor was the close contact in which Occidentalism or Greek culture found itself with Orientalism.  Here it was where the Greek and Oriental spirit mixed and mingled, producing doctrines and religious systems containing germs of tradition and science, of inspiration and reflection.  Images and formulas, method and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined.  The brilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety of intelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated and vivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour.  On the other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which is characterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious, would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not been aided by Greek science.  It was the latter that arranged and explained the Oriental traditions, loosed their tongues, and produced those religious doctrines and philosophical systems which culminated in Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, the Judaism of Philo, and the Polytheism of Julian the Apostate.

It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the first centuries of our era.  It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific colours.  Hence the religious spirit in philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system that are the characteristic features.  “East and West,” says Baldwin,* “met at Alexandria.”  The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures, and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East found themselves in juxtaposition.  Hence arose a new problem, developed partly by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration.  Religion and philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses of an attempt at combining both.