plainly see how far this symbolism, peculiar to the race, obscured the
minds of Plato and Aristotle, and of almost all the subsequent
philosophers. In the Semitic and Chinese races this inner symbolism of
the mind, with reference to the interpretation of nature, was less
tenacious, intense, and productive, and they soon freed themselves from
their mental bonds in order to rise to the conception of the absolute
Being, distinct from the world. When this idea had been grasped by rude
and popular intuition, men of the highest intellectual power perfected
the still confused conception, and founded upon it science, civil and
political institutions, and national customs.

"The idea of Christianity arose in the midst of the Semitic people
through him whose name it bears, and who perfected the religious idea
of his nation. This idea, in its Semitic simplicity, consisted in a
belief in the existence of one, eternal, infinite God, the immediate
creator of all things; it included the tradition of man's loss of his
original felicity, and the promise of a restoration of all peoples, and
of the Israelites in particular, to their former condition of earthly
happiness. Christ appeared, and while he upheld the Mosaic law and its
original idea, he declared himself to be the promised deliverer, sent of
God; the Son of God, which among the Semitic people was the term applied
to their prophets. His moral teaching gave a more perfect form to the
old law, and by his example he afforded a model of human virtue worthy
of all veneration; the germs of a marvellous civilization were to be
found in his moral and partially new teaching. The same doctrine had
been, to some extent, inculcated by the Jewish teachers, and the schools
of Hillel and Gamaliel were certainly not morally inferior to his own,
as we learn from the tradition of the Talmud, and from some passages in
the Acts of the Apostles. The origin, development, and teaching of
primitive Christianity were therefore essentially Semitic, since it had
its origin in a people of that race, and in a man of that people. Yet
the Semitic race did not become Christian; and, after so many ages have
elapsed, it still rejects Christianity. It was the Aryan race, to which
we Europeans belong, which adopted this teaching and became essentially
Christian, although this race is psychologically the most idolatrous of
the world, as far as the aesthetic idol--not the common fetish--is
concerned. Let us inquire