the Then and There, is alluring.

And now the pilgrims came from Athens, and Rome, and the Islands of the
Sea to sit at the feet of Hypatia.

* * * * *

Hypatia was born in the year Three Hundred Seventy, and died in Four
Hundred Thirty. She exerted an influence in Alexandria not unlike that
which Mrs. Eddy exerted in Boston. She was a person who divided society
into two parts: those who regarded her as an oracle of light, and those
who looked upon her as an emissary of darkness.

Strong men paid her the compliment of using immoderate language
concerning her teaching. But whether they spoke ill or well of her
matters little now. The point is this: they screeched, sneezed, or
smiled on those who refused to acknowledge the power of Hypatia. Some
professors of learning tried to waive her; priests gently pooh-poohed
her; and some elevated an eyebrow and asked how the name was spelled.
Others, still, inquired, "Is she sincere?"

She was the Ralph Waldo Emerson of her day. Her philosophy was
Transcendentalism. In fact, she might be spoken of as the original
charter member of the Concord School of Philosophy. Her theme was the
New Thought, for New Thought is the oldest form of thought of which we
know. Its distinguishing feature is its antiquity. Socrates was really
the first to express the New Thought, and he got his cue from
Pythagoras.

The ambition of Hypatia was to revive the flowering-time of Greece, when
Socrates and Plato walked arm in arm through the streets of Athens,
followed by the greatest group of intellectuals the world has ever
seen.

It was charged against Hypatia that Aspasia was her ideal, and that her
ambition was to follow in the footsteps of the woman who was beloved by
Pericles. If so, it was an ambition worthy of a very great soul.
Hypatia, however, did not have her Pericles, and never married. That she
should have had love experiences was quite natural, and that various
imaginary romances should have been credited to her was also to be
expected.

Hypatia was nearly a thousand years removed from the time of Pericles
and Aspasia, but to bridge the gulf of time with imagination was easy.
Yet Hypatia thought that the New Platonism should surpass the old, for
the world had had the Age of Augustus to build upon.

Hypatia's immediate prototype was Plotinus, who was born two hundred
four years after Christ, and lived to be seventy. Plotinus was the first
person to us