had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more a rival of and opposed to religion.  Such were the tendencies of the Stoic and Epicurean schools.  The Roman rule was greatly favourable to such a development of thought.  The Romans were a practical nation, had no conception of nor appreciation for purely theoretical problems, and demanded practical lessons and philosophical investigations which would serve as a guide for life.  Thus the political tendency of the time towards practical wisdom had imparted a new direction to philosophical thought.  Yet, as time went on, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glories of the Roman rule.  This huge empire could offer to the peoples, which it had welded into one mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; it offered them no inner worth nor outer fortune.  There was a complete discord running through the entire civilisation of the Graeco-Roman world.  The social condition of the empire had brought with it extreme contrasts in the daily life.  The contrasts had become more pronounced.  Abundance and luxury existed side by side with misery and starvation.  Millions were excluded from the very necessaries of existence.  With the sense of injustice and revolt against the existing inequality of the state of society, the hope for some future compensation arose.  The millions excluded from the worldly possessions turned longingly to a better world.  The thoughts of man were turned to something beyond terrestrial life, to heaven instead of earth.  Philosophy, too, had failed to give complete satisfaction.  Man had realised his utter inability to find knowledge in himself by his unaided efforts.  He despaired to arrive at it without the help of some transcendental power and its kind assistance.  Salvation was not to be found in man’s own nature, but in a world beyond that of the senses.  Philosophy could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, could not secure for him the promised happiness.  Philosophy, therefore, turned to religion for help.  At Alexandria, where, in the active work of its museum, all treasures of Grecian culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded together in the great throng of the commercial metropolis to seek a scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within them.  The cosmopolitan spirit and broad-mindedness which had brought nations together under the Egyptian government, which had gathered scholars from all parts in the library and the museum, was favourable also to the fusion and reconciliation in the evolution of thought.