all his time in prayers in the cloister or the hermit's cell.... A
Christian art is a contradiction in terms" (p. 120).

I think it may without offence be said that if he means by "Primitive
Christianity" the teachings of Christ, he is mistaken, and has
something to learn as to what those teachings really were. If he means
the times of persecution under the Roman empire, he could hardly expect
much concentration on artistic pursuits or much enjoyment of
terrestrial existence when it was liable to be violently extinguished
at any moment: sufficient that the early Church survived its struggle
for existence. But if he is referring to mediaeval Christianity, of any
other than a debased kind,--common knowledge concerning mediaeval art
and architecture sufficiently rebuts the indictment. So much so, that
one may almost wonder if by chance he happened to be thinking of
"Mohammedanism" rather than of Christianity.

But he continues, in a more practical and observant vein:--

"Christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals,
that sympathy with the nearly-related and friendly mammals (dogs,
horses, cattle, etc.) which is urged in the ethical teaching of
many of the older religions, especially Buddhism. (Unfortunately,
Descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only
has a sensitive soul, not the animal.) Whoever has spent much time
in the south of Europe must have often witnessed those frightful
sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the
deepest sympathy and indignation. And when one expostulates with
these brutal 'Christians' on their cruelty, the only answer is,
with a laugh: 'But the beasts are not Christians'" (p. 126).

This, if true, and I have heard it from other sources, does constitute
rather a serious indictment against the form of practical Christianity
understood by the ignorant classes among the Latin races.

To return, however, to the concluding paragraph of the extract quoted
above (on page 81) from his page 119:--

No one can have any objection to raise against the dignity and
worthiness of the three great attributes which excite Professor
Haeckel's, as they excited Goethe's, worship and admiration, viz., the
three "goddesses," as he calls them: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; but
there is no necessary competition or antagonism between these and the
other three great conceptions which aroused the veneration of