In the eyes of whoever studies history in the light of cosmic Truth, the Fourth Century before Christ -- the beginning of the Hellenistic period in the annals of the Near East, which are inseparable from those of imperial Rome and of the Christian West -- should be considered as the beginning of the last part of the present Dark Age, of which we are, now, nearing the end.

Accelerated decay had, no doubt, already set in amid the Greek world (as elsewhere) before the foundation of Alexandria. It had set in, and was spreading -- a sinister sign of the times. But the confusion that started in 323 BC -- after Alexander's sudden death -- gave it a new impulse (much against the spirit and intentions of the Conqueror.)

The latter had, better than any of his most broad-minded contemporaries, understood the necessity of transcending that strictly Hellenic -- be it pan-Hellenic -- patriotism, that sharp distinction between Greek and non-Greek expressed in the words: Pas men Hellen Barbaros ["Anyone who isn't Greek is a barbarian"]. Yet, far from setting the example of such internationalism, as many modern ideologists would doubtless like to attribute to him, he drew a very definite line between one sort of non-Greeks and the others. [Image: Alexander as Apollo on a Macedonian coin, perhaps the oldest portrait of Alexander.]

He encouraged his pure-blooded Macedonians to marry Persian women -- Aryans like themselves who merely spoke a different language and had different customs -- but, significantly enough, not women of other races. And both his own foreign wives were of Aryan blood.

In other words, whether he acted in this connection in full, clear consciousness, or through some vague intuition -- an intuition of genius, however vague it might have been -- he seems to have been, in our advanced Dark Age, one of the first great forerunners of true racialism as opposed to narrow State-patriotism, a practical champion of the idea that racial similitude should help to break down artificial barriers between people, being, moreover, as it is, the only reality in the name of which the suppression of such long accepted barriers is justified.

One should not make him responsible for the shocking blood-mixtures that took place all over the Near East at a yet unheard-of rate, after him. They were fateful -- as I said: signs of times. And consequences of a rapidly spreading man-centered attitude to life, for the generalization of which the Greek-speaking Jews of all the important trade and culture centers of the Hellenic world, especially of Alexandria, bear the heaviest responsibility.

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