Reconciliation of Science And Religion

This dawn we must regard as the morning rays of the First Psychic Cycle of Christian history. Its meridian was more than a century in the future. Its Religious Phase is manifest in three points of resurgence from the chaos of doubt. First, the Eclectics, of whom, perhaps, Cicero is chief (106-43 B.c.), manifested the initial movement; second," the New Academy brought Platonism back to its pristine spirituality; third, Judaism, working in Alexandria, leavened the Greek philosophy which had found its way thither. Cicero's Eclecticism consisted in his adhesion to the Skeptical theory of cognition taught by the Middle Academy; his indifference to physics, and his wavering attitude in ethics, between the doctrines of the Stoics and the Peripatetics. He held to the certainty of moral consciousness, and the doctrine of innate ideas, and hence maintained that the consensus gentium is a criterion of truth. He is particularly attached, like Socrates, to the belief in Providence and immortality. The Sextians, originating at Rome, were also Eclectic, arising about the epoch of Christ, and holding a position equidistant from Pythagoreanism, Cynicism, and Stoicism. A somewhat more decided revival was inaugurated by Philo of Larissa, the founder of the New Academy, during the lifefUDA-ISTIC THEOSOPHY. 67 time of Cicero. It is sufficient to note that in him the spirit of Plato re-appeared in many of its original lineaments. This affords Draper the opportunity to date the de...