PiiiLosorHY OF Botany. 205 



of Athens, Antiocbia, and Ephesus, who still maintained the 

 old doctrines. 



The plan of the new system intended to discourage individ- 

 ual, independent tliought. The youth was to be broug-ht up in 

 humility, faithfulness, and " laissez-faire " manners. Men of 

 strength of cliaracter and self-reliance were considered dan- 

 gerous to the hierarchy and its dictates. In place of the poets, 

 philosophers, orators, and historians of the old time, which 

 had formerly served as manuals of instruction to the students, 

 the holy v/rits of the Old Testament were supplanted. A re- 

 ligion which was originally intended for the awakening of pi- 

 ous emotion, love, and justice, and which was well preached by 

 the untaught apostles and their followers, was converted into 

 a collection of sophistical subtleties, and attendance to dispu- 

 tations and partaking in ecclesiastic ceremonies formed the 

 prominent entertainments of the society of those days. 



I had to interrupt the chronologic order to forestall the 

 events under whose influence the Christian clergy acquired 

 control of the education of the youth in the Eastern Empire to 

 bring it in closer connection with the same events in the West- 

 ern Empire. 



The great civil war, the contest for supremacy between 

 Cresar and Pompejus, had ended with the defeat of the latter 

 in the battle of Pharsalus, which sealed the downfall of the 

 Roman republic, the occupation of Egypt by Ctesar, the as- 

 sassination of the dictator. Then followed the tragic deathi 

 of Cleopatra, the last heir to the Ptolemean throne ; the in- 

 corporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire under a Roman 

 pnptor. All these revolutions exerted but little influence 

 upon the Alexandrian schools. At the time of the destruc- 

 tion of Jerusalem the Sceptics and Gnostics shared equal au- 

 thority. Within a short period Christianity had made a great 

 many conversions, and came into ascendency, and Alexandria 

 became one of the three rivaling bishoprics, the other two be- 

 ing Constantinople and Rome. 



The Christian church had been divided in regard to admin- 

 istration and tetiets from the very beginning. For a while 

 tolerance and even liberality prevailed toward difference of 

 opinion. Not until the council of NiciPa appeared the name 



