ely
spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of
woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was
largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love.
The identity of love and chastity was propounded--in sharp contrast to
sexuality and--more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as
Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in
Italy--with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy.

Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if
man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped
upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found
an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She
was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was
sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a
new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were
the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German
poet.

Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the
European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its
higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies
of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman
was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal
was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects.
Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the
headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a
member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that
his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period
when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern
men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the
Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a
component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality.

We find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in
the Platonic figure of Socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of
a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated
it sharply from base desire. Though his conception was not yet personal
love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. The
Greek State could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. But this
same S