“ The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research. They are distinguished by artistic form, purity of expression and strict attention to the laws of metre and prosody, qualities which, however good in themselves, do not compensate for want of originality, freshness and power.
In their lyric and elegiac poetry there is much worthy of admiration. The specimens we possess are not devoid of talent or of a certain happy art of expression. ”

“ The city of Alexandria had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great problem of thought. ”

“ There was among them no definite system of philosophy. Even in the later schools of philosophy proper there is found a community rather of tendency than of definite result or of fixed principles.
I. Literature.—The general character of the literature of the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state of affairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and independence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been the products of a fresh life of nature and perfect freedom of thought. ”

“ Their works are never national, never addressed to a people, but to a circle of learned men. Moreover, the very fact of being under the protection and, as it were, in the pay of an absolute monarch was damaging to the character of their literature. ”

“ He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysic, and may be regarded as representing the climax of Jewish philosophy. ”

“ The intellectual movement so originated extended over a long period of years. If we date its rise from the 4th century B.C., at the time of the fall of Greece and the foundation of the Graeco-Macedonian empire, we must look for its final dissolution in the 7th century of the Christian era, at the time of the fall of Alexandria and the rise of the Mahommedan power. ”

“ Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. ”