unknown author of the "Wisdom of Solomon" shows, in his delicious but dubious numbers, how unalarming even an original could be when it was composed at Alexandria:
Let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth.
Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us.
Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered.
Let none of us go without his part in our voluptuousness, let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place, for this is our portion and our lot is this.
It is true that, pulling himself together, the writer goes on to remind us that the above remarks are no elegy on Alexander and Hephæstion, but an indictment of the ungodly, and must be read sarcastically.
Such things they did imagine and were deceived, for their own wickedness hath blinded them.
As for the mysteries of God they knew them not, neither hoped they for the wages of righteousness nor discerned a reward for blameless souls.
For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be the image of his own eternity.
But it is too late. And all racial and religious effort was too late. Though Pharos was not to be Greek it was not to be Hebrew either. A more impartial power dominated it. Five hundred feet above all shrines and huts, Science had already raised her throne.
II
A lighthouse was a necessity. The coast of Egypt is, in its western section, both flat and rocky,
