Note 348 — Chapter V · FREETHOUGHT IN GREECE

Such was the soil in which Christianity took root and flourished; while philosophy, after the freethinking epoch following on the fall of Athenian power, gradually reverted to one or other form of mystical theism or theosophy, of which the most successful was the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria.348 When the theosophic Julian rejoiced that Epicureanism had disappeared,349 he was exulting in a symptom of the intellectual decline that made possible the triumph of the faith he most opposed. Christianity furthered a decadence thus begun under the auspices of pagan imperialism; and “the fifth century of the Christian era witnessed an almost total extinction of the sciences in Alexandria”350—an admission which disposes of the dispute as to the guilt of the Arabs in destroying the great library.