ng and embracing fauns and maenads. Generations passed away, but
new ones arose, embracing and begetting life--for life was eternal.
Death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the
true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species. The death
of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the
soul had become the centre and climax of life. An individual had passed
away for ever--nothing could recall him. Death had become the final
issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things:
self-conscious man. But love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual
impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of
the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the
earth. A new pang had come into the world, but also a new
reconciliation.

THE SECOND STAGE: LOVE

CHAPTER I

THE BIRTH OF EUROPE

The memory of the figure and preaching of Christ had so powerfully
influenced the centuries that it had gradually permeated and transformed
not only the Platonic doctrine of ideas--that maturest fruit of Greek
wisdom--but also the Semitic mediaeval monotheism. Something new had
sprung into being, something which expressed a hitherto unknown feeling
for life and for humanity, vague and uncertain in the beginning, but
growing in clearness and uniformity. On the throne of the Roman emperors
sat a bishop, whose power was increasing with the development of the new
civilisation, and whom the final victory of the new transcendental
world-principle had made master of the world. The building up of this
new civilisation had absorbed the intellectual force of a thousand
years; it had monopolised thought and every form of energy. The reward
was great. For the first time in the annals of the world the
questionings of brooding intelligence were fully answered, the anguish
of the tortured soul was stilled. The purpose of the universe, the
destiny of man, were comprehended and interpreted, good and evil being
finally known. At the close of the first Christian millenary, all moral
and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme
ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with
the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the Church; together
with the imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical
inheritance of the dead civilisations. Without her uncouth barbarism
reigned, and it