True! And how should he know better?
How could he tell how much more there was to know, in that great new universe, in such a cranny whereof his life had till now been past?
He had heard but one side already.

What if there were two sides?
Had he not a right-that is, was it not proper, fair, prudent, that he should hear both, and then judge?
Cyril had hardly, perhaps, done wisely for the youth in sending him out about the practical drudgery of benevolence, before deciding for him what was his duty with regard to Hypatia's invitation.

He had not calculated on the new thoughts which were tormenting the young monk; perhaps they would have been unintelligible to him bad he known of them.
Cyril had been bred up under the most stern dogmatic training, in those vast monastic establishments, which had arisen amid the neighbouring saltpetre quarries of Nitria, where thousands toiled in voluntary poverty and starvation at vast bakeries, dyeries, brick-fields, tailors' shops, carpenters' yards, and expended the profits of their labour, not on themselves, for they had need of nothing, but on churches, hospitals, and alms.

Educated in that world of practical industrial production as well as of religious exercise, which by its proximity to the great city accustomed monks to that world which they despised; entangled from boyhood in the intrigues of his fierce and ambitious uncle Theophilus, Cyril had succeeded him in the patriarchate of Alexandria without having felt a doubt, and stood free to throw his fiery energy and clear practical intellect into the cause of the Church without scruple, even, where necessary, without pity.

How could such a man sympathise with the poor boy of twenty, suddenly dragged forth from the quiet cavern-shadow of the Laura into the full blaze and roar of the world's noonday?
He, too, was cloister-bred.