We have seen already, that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence among the Greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not the foundation of their lore.

Grafted on a Grecian stock, every shoot bore Grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism was reproduced in beauty [184].

As with the arts, so with the SCIENCES; we have reason to doubt whether the Egyptian sages, whose minds were swathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never to swell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightened philosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated by the lively and credulous Greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests, the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, of imposing and antique custom.

What, then, was the real benefit of the intercourse?
Not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulating the curiosity of knowledge.

Egypt, to the Greeks, was as America to Europe--the Egyptians taught them little, but Egypt much.