Charles Kingsley

“ Your practical man, poor wretch, will try to help this and that, and torment his soul with ways and means, and preventives and forestallings; your philosopher quietly says—It can't be helped. If it ought to be, it will be—if it is, it ought to be. We did not make the world, and we are not responsible for it.—There is the sum and substance of all true wisdom, and the epitome of all that has been said and written thereon from Philo the Jew to Hypatia the Gentile. By the way, here's Cyril coming down the steps of the Caesareum. ”

“ But never, while these lecture-rooms last—these Egyptian chambers of imagery—these theatres of Satan, where the devil transforms himself into an angel of light, and apes Christian virtue, and bedizens his ministers like ministers of righteousness, as long as that lecture-room stands and the great and the powerful flock to it, to learn excuses for their own tyrannies and atheisms, so long will the kingdom of God be trampled under foot in Alexandria ”

“ In an age when, as has been well and often said, emperors and consulars crawl to the tombs of a tent-maker and a fisherman, and kiss the mouldy bones of the vilest slaves? Why not, among a people whose God is the crucified son of a carpenter? ”

“ The struggle is simply one between the aristocracy and the mob,—between wealth, refinement, art, learning, all that makes a nation great, and the savage herd of child-breeders below, the many ignoble, who were meant to labour for the noble few. Shall the Roman empire command or obey her own slaves? is the question which you and Cyril have to battle out ”

“ What men those barbarians do breed! I was afraid of being crushed under the elephant's foot at every step I took with him!'
'What!' asked Hypatia, 'did your excellency condescend to converse with such savages?'
'To tell you the truth, he had some forty stout countrymen of his with him, who might have been troublesome to a perplexed prefect; not to mention that it is always as well to keep on good terms with these Goths. Really, after the sack of Rome, and Athens cleaned out like a beehive by wasps, things begin to look serious. ”

“ To struggle to the last against the new and vulgar superstitions of a rotting age, for the faith of my forefathers, for the old gods, the old heroes, the old sages who gauged the mysteries of heaven and earth—and perhaps to conquer—at least to have my reward! To be welcomed into the celestial ranks of the heroic—to rise to the immortal gods, to the ineffable powers, onward, upward ever, through ages and through eternities, till I find my home at last, and vanish in the glory of the Nameless and the Absolute One! ”

“ If those Christians would but lend me their money, instead of building alms-houses and hospitals with it, they might burn the Jews' quarter to-morrow, for aught I care. But now. . . .'
'But now, you must absolutely take no notice of this letter. The very tone of it forbids you, for your own honour, and the honour of the empire. Are you to treat with a man who talks of the masses at Alexandria as "the flock whom the King of kings has committed to his rule and care"? ”

“ Look round the corner now.—Chariots, litters, slaves, and fops.—When shall we see such a concourse as that where it ought to be?'
Cyril made no answer; and Peter went on—'Where it ought to be, my father—in front of your door at the Serapeium?'
'The world, the flesh, and the devil know their own, Peter: and as long as they have their own to go to, we cannot expect them to come to us.'
'But what if their own were taken out of the way?'
'They might come to us for want of better amusement . . . . devil and all. ”

“ For in the light arm-chair, reading a manuscript which lay on the table, sat a woman, of some five-and-twenty years, evidently the tutelary goddess of that little shrine, dressed in perfect keeping with the archaism of the chamber, in simple old snow-white Ionic robe, falling to the feet and reaching to the throat, and of that peculiarly severe and graceful fashion in which the upper part of the dress falls downward again from the neck to the waist in a sort of cape, entirely hiding the outline of the bust, while it leaves the arms and the point of the shoulders bare. ”

“ You may thank me for that privilege.'
'After, of course, you had suited yourself, my cunning Raphael?'
'Not I. Women are bores, as Solomon found out long ago. Did I never tell you? I began, as he did, with the most select harem in Alexandria. ”

“ I don't know, though; the man has the head of a Julius. Well—that fool Attalus talked of joining Egypt to the Western Empire . . . . Not such a bad thought either. Anything is better than being governed by an idiot child and three canting nuns. I expect to be excommunicated every day for some offence against Pulcheria's prudery . . . . Heraclian emperor at Rome . . . . and I lord and master on this side the sea. the Donatists pitted again fairly against the orthodox, to cut each other's throats in peace . . . . no more of Cyril's spying and tale-bearing to Constantinople . ”

“ Six new pupils in the mathematical school this morning. It grows! It spreads! We shall conquer yet!'
She sighed. 'How do you know that they have not come to you, as Critias and Alcibiades did to Socrates, to learn a merely political and mundane virtue? Strange! that men should be content to grovel, and be men, when they might rise to the rank of gods! Ah, my father! That is my bitterest grief! to see those who have been pretending in the morning lecture-room to worship every word of mine as an oracle, lounging in the afternoon round Pelagia's litter ”

“ She has lifted her eyes off her manuscript; she is looking out with kindling countenance over the gardens of the Museum; her ripe curling Greek lips, such as we never see now, even among her own wives and sisters, open. She is talking to herself. Listen!
'Yes. The statues there are broken. The libraries are plundered. The alcoves are silent. The oracles are dumb. And yet—who says that the old faith of heroes and sages is dead? The beautiful can never die. If the gods have deserted their oracles, they have not deserted the souls who aspire to them. ”

“ If they have ceased to guide nations, they have not ceased to speak to their own elect. If they have cast off the vulgar herd, they have not cast off Hypatia. *⁠*⁠*
'Ay. To believe in the old creeds, while every one else is dropping away from them . . . . To believe in spite of disappointments . . . . To hope against hope . . . . To show oneself superior to the herd, by seeing boundless depths of living glory in myths which have become dark and dead to them . ”

“ I quite agree that there are very great practical inconveniences of this kind in the new—I mean the Catholic faith; but the world is full of inconveniences. The wise man does not quarrel with his creed for being disagreeable, any more than he does with his finger for aching: he cannot help it, and must make the best of a bad matter. Only tell me how to keep the peace.'
'And let philosophy be destroyed?'
'That it never will be, as long as Hypatia lives to illuminate the earth ”

“ Tell me how you found out all this, or by Hercules (he had quite forgotten his Christianity by this time) —by Hercules and the Twelve Gods, I'll—'
'Don't use expressions unworthy of a philosopher. My source of information was very simple and very good. He has been negotiating a loan from the Rabbis at Carthage. They were either frightened, or loyal, or both, and hung back. He knew—as all wise governors know when they allow themselves time—that it is no use to bully a Jew ”