cannot allow ourselves to doubt that Babylonian 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,[1] had she possessed a sound philosophy. We cannot, then, shut our eyes to the exaggeration of the part which Dr. Chwolson ascribes to Babylonia in the history of the human mind. Rectitude 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.
- ↑ 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.
