BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 99 



cannot allow ourselves to doubt that Baby- 

 lonian studies had greatly degenerated at the 

 time of the Seleucides ; one cannot, in fact, 

 conceive that Babylonia should have spread 

 abroad nothing but chimerical science/ had 

 she possessed a sound philosophy. We can- 

 not, then, shut our eyes to the exaggeration 

 of the part which Dr. Chwolson ascribes to 

 Babylonia in the history of the human mind. 

 Eectitude of thought, surety of judgment, 

 exclusive love of truth — without which 

 science cannot keep itself from degenerating 

 into routine, and interested self-complacency 

 — are the essential qualities of philosophical 

 creation. It is because she possessed these 

 qualities, to a degree of originality which 

 constitutes genius, that Greece holds a place 

 in the education of the mind, of which it is 

 not probable that she will ever be dispossessed. 



1 The same may be said of Egypt. Egyptian and Babylonian 

 science appear to have had analogous destinies. Lacking that 

 purely analytical, experimental, and rational principle which gave 

 force to the Greek, as it still does to the modern mind, they 

 have not been able to defend themselves from the charge of 

 charlatanism, a term fatal to all culture which rests on anything 

 but purely scientific researches. 



