The philosophy of the fourth century B.C. is peculiarly valuable and interesting, not merely from its intrinsic speculative worth--from the originality and grandeur of its two principal heroes--from its coincidence with the full display of dramatic, rhetorical, artistic genius--but also from a fourth reason not unimportant--because it is purely Hellenic; preceding the development of Alexandria, and the amalgamation of Oriental veins of thought with the inspirations of the Academy or the Lyceum. The Orontes[7] and the Jordan had not yet begun to flow westward, and to impart their own colour to the waters of Attica and Latium. Not merely the real world, but also the ideal world, present to the minds of Plato and Aristotle, were purely Hellenic. Even during the century immediately following, this had ceased to be fully true in respect to the philosophers of Athens: and it became less and less true with each succeeding century. New foreign centres of rhetoric and literature--Asiatic and Alexandrian Hellenism--were fostered into importance by regal encouragement. Plato and Aristotle are thus the special representatives of genuine Hellenic philosophy. The remarkable intellectual ascendancy acquired by them in their own day, and maintained over succeeding centuries, was one main reason why the Hellenic vein was enabled so long to maintain itself, though in impoverished condition, against adverse influences from the East, ever increasing in force. Plato and Aristotle outlasted all their Pagan successors--successors at once less purely Hellenic and less highly gifted. And when Saint Jerome, near 750 years after the decease of Plato, commemorated with triumph the victory of unlettered Christians over the accomplishments and genius of Paganism--he illustrated the magnitude of the victory, by singling out Plato and Aristotle as the representatives of vanquished philosophy.[8] [Footnote 7: Juvenal iii. 62:-- "Jampridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes," &c.] [Footnote 8: The passage is a remarkable one, as marking both the effect produced on a Latin scholar by Hebrew studies, and the neglect into which even the greatest writers of classical antiquity had then fallen (about 400 A.D.). Hieronymus--Comment. in Epist. ad Galatas, iii. 5, p. 486-487, ed. Venet. 1769:--