That quiescent under-action of the mind to which we apply the term meditation, is a habit of thought that has been engrafted upon the European intellect in consequence of the reception of Christianity. It is a product almost as proper to Asia as are the aromatics of Arabia, or the spices of India. The human mind does not everywhere expand in this manner, nor spontaneously show these hues of heaven, nor emit this fragrance, except under the fervent suns and deep azure skies of tropical regions. Persia and India were the native soils of the contemplative philosophy; as Greece was the source of the ratiocinative. The immense difference between the Asiatic and the European turn of mind—if the familiar phrase may be used—becomes conspicuous if some pages of either the logic or ethics of Aristotle are compared with what remains of the sentiments of the Gnostics. The influence of Christianity upon the moderns has been to temper the severity of the ratiocinative taste, with a taste for contemplation—contemplation by so much the better than that of the oriental sages, as it takes its range in the heart, not in the imagination. If the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures had been confined to the east, as in fact they have been almost confined to the west, the modern nations of Europe would perhaps have known as little of the compass of the meditative faculty, and of its delights, as did the Romans in the age of Sylla. The Greeks, being near to Asia geographically, and near by similarity of climate, and near by the repeated importations of eastern philosophy, imbibed something of the spirit of tranquil abstraction: yet was it foreign to the genius of that restless and reasoning people. Pythagoras probably, and certainly Plato, whose mind was almost as much Asiatic as Grecian, and whose writings are anomalies in Grecian literature, effected a partial amalgamation of the oriental with the western style of thought. Yet the foreign mixture would probably have disappeared if Christianity had not afterwards diffused eastern sentiments through the west. The combination was again cemented by the writings of those fathers who, after having studied Plato, and taught the rhetoric and philosophy of Greece, devoted their talents to the service of the Gospel.