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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: that they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they
only exhibited the common and natural faults of old age. For as with
individuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought--
youth is the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong
induction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,
and content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of
their earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and
anathematising all conclusions which have been arrived at since their
own meridian. It is sad: but it is patent and common. It is sad to
think that the day may come to each of us, when we shall have ceased to
hope for discovery and for progress; when a thing will seem e priori
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