tic races who, driven out from their own country, wandered away, and
by degrees hit upon Europe: on their long wanderings they lost the
original religion of their homes, and with it the correct view of life;
and this is why they formed in another climate religions for themselves
which were somewhat crude; especially the worship of Odin, the Druidic
and the Greek religions, the metaphysical contents of which were small
and shallow. Meanwhile there developed among the Greeks a quite special,
one might say an instinctive, sense of beauty, possessed by them alone
of all the nations of the earth that have ever existed--a peculiar,
fine, and correct sense of beauty, so that in the mouths of their poets
and in the hands of their artists, their mythology took an exceptionally
beautiful and delightful form. On the other hand, the earnest, true, and
profound import of life was lost to the Greeks and Romans; they lived
like big children until Christianity came and brought them back to the
serious side of life.

_Phil_. And to form an idea of the result we need only compare antiquity
with the Middle Age that followed--that is, the time of Pericles with
the fourteenth century. It is difficult to believe that we have the same
kind of beings before us. There, the finest development of humanity,
excellent constitutional regulations, wise laws, cleverly distributed
offices, rationally ordered freedom, all the arts, as well as poetry and
philosophy, at their best; the creation of works which after thousands
of years have never been equalled and are almost works of a higher order
of beings, whom we can never approach; life embellished by the noblest
fellowship, as is portrayed in the _Banquet_ of Xenophon. And now look
at this side, if you can. Look at the time when the Church had
imprisoned the minds, and violence the bodies of men, whereby knights
and priests could lay the whole weight of life on the common beast of
burden--the third estate. There you have club-law, feudalism, and
fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train shocking uncertainty
and darkness of mind, a corresponding intolerance, discord of faiths,
religious wars, crusades, persecution of heretics and inquisitions; as
the form of fellowship, chivalry, an amalgam of savagery and
foolishness, with its pedantic system of absurd affectations, its
degrading superstitions, and apish veneration for women; the survival of
which is gallantry, deservedly requited by the arrogan